A woman in a red sweater crawls on her hands and knees along a highway bridge muttering about evil and Jesus, saying, “I am not safe within myself."

Meanwhile, a young blonde girl walks through a rundown village, stopping momentarily to lie backwards into a mud puddle.

These are two scenes from Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s short film, "Five-Channel Synchronous Video with Sound," which takes the viewer into five different worlds – via five different television sets – where characters question their roles in life.

Ahtila is one of the four Nordic artists whose work is showcased in BENT: Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Scandinavian Art, an exhibit which opened at SF State’s Fine Arts Gallery on Feb. 11. The other artists include Jesper Just, Annika Larsson and Annica Karlsson Rixon.

BENT - a project of the International Center for the Arts (ICA) at SF State - attempts to examine how gender and sexuality influence the formation of one's identity. However, this connection is sometimes lost in the beautiful absurdity, and as with much avant-garde art, interpretations vary.

“I felt that one of the wonderful things about BENT was its ambiguity,” said Whitney Chadwick, exhibit curator and SF State professor of art and art history. “It achieves much of its power and provocativeness through its ambiguity.”

One SF State student had trouble understanding how the exhibit title related to the art, but she did enjoy some of the works.

“I’m still trying to make sense of it,” said Kresta Kualupali, 24, journalism senior. “I did like the Roy Orbison one, I watched it twice,” she added, referring to Jesper Just’s film, "No Man is an Island II."

The four-minute short – shot on DVCam – features a young man in a drab strip club, who spontaneously bursts into a soulful rendition of Orbison’s hit, "Crying Over You."

Just’s films have a strong undercurrent of surrealism and are a must see for David Lynch fans. In one film, a sleek black sedan crawls through an empty parking garage, while solemn passengers stare longingly out at the camera.

In another one of Just's films, a country boy stumbles upon an impromptu show in a deserted theater in which a middle-aged man in a blonde wig and white scarf sings out, “Please don’t keep me waiting … take me back into your arms once again.”

Offering only vague answers about his work, Just allows the subjective integrity to remain intact.

“I like to keep it open,” he said. “I’d rather ask questions than give answers.”

“In Scandinavia, there’s been a very strong fight for women’s rights,” Just said. “But in that time, I think maybe the men have forgotten to redefine themselves.”

While the bizarre subject matter in Just’s films seems to fuel their substance, Annika Larsson’s 16-minute DVD projection "Dog," relies more on spatial relationships, use of positive and negative space and textural elements to entrance the viewer.

Perhaps the most unique work of the exhibit, "Dog" breaks new ground as a visual masterpiece. Ambient sounds and slow bass lines reinforce the long, sluggish scenes of two gray-suited men and a dog on a polished silver chain.

Its plot is secondary and virtually non-existent, thus allowing the viewer to fully absorb the film’s incredible aesthetic composition and symmetry. The end result lands somewhere between traditional filmmaking and fine art photography.

BENT is a great example of modernist art, but its relation to gender and sexuality is not always clear.

The exhibit continues through March 16.