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Bente Christensen-Ernst (born June 20, 1941 in Aarhus, Denmark) is a Danish visual artist. Bente Christensen-Ernst started painting in 1979 while living in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she attended a course in preparation for the academy. In 1981, however, she moved to Ankara, Turkey, where she had her first two solo shows in 1984 and 1985. After returning to Denmark in 1987, she appeared on censored exhibitions and had solo shows in local galleries. From 2005 she started working in her studio in Istanbul, Turkey while still collaborating with galleries in Denmark. Since 2008, she has been working in her studio in Antioch (Antakya, Hatay, Turkey) while keeping her studios in Istanbul and Copenhagen. Bente Christensen-Ernst has had solo shows in New York, Ankara, Istanbul, Adana, Beirut, Aleppo and Damascus. Bente Christensen-Ernst is a neorealist, but due to her many years in the Middle East her style is different from that of Western neorealists. Thus the Danish art critic Tom Jørgensen calls her an ”orientalized Scandinavian.” She is also known as a portrait painter.