In her new paintings, Kensmil depicts mythological figures and glacial landscapes. In these works, she explores themes such as power, beauty and transience.

Early cultures used myths to understand the changing world around them. Stories of the death, decline and rebirth of gods and heroes served as metaphors for the fragility of human life.
Kensmil paints portraits of Greek goddesses and nymphs: archetypes of an idealised beauty that has endured for centuries. In her paintings, these classical figures take on a new form. Through her layered and at times raw painting style, she highlights the transience of idealised beauty.

Alongside the depictions of divine figures hang paintings of glaciers.In their pure form, glaciers are breathtakingly beautiful. However, due to climate change, they have also become the ultimate symbol of what is slowly disappearing. In these paintings, Kensmil depicts the process of erosion and melting. Their dark, weathered surfaces bear traces of pollution, violence and decay.

In another painting, Marble Grief, we see the sleeping Ariadne as a nymph, in a restless sleep marked by grief. The image symbolises human vulnerability. The title of the painting is taken from the book Grief Made Marble (1), a study of the interplay between art and mourning in antiquity.

With A Grave of Mythology, Kensmil has created an impressive exhibition about change, loss and the fragility of a world that is constantly in flux.
  
Paintings by Natasja Kensmil are also on display in Gossip, Buitenplaats Kasteel Wijlre; Collection as Cosmos, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Collection Display, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Plantage aan de gracht, Huis Willet-Holthuysen, Amsterdam; and Hold On: Identity and Intimacy in Late Medieval Book of Hours, Museum Meermanno, The Hague. On 10 October, her monumental mural Allegory of Glaciers will open in the stairwell of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
 
(1) Grief Made Marble: Funerary Sculpture in Classical Athens, Seth Estrin, Yale University Press, 2023