Eva Helene Pade: Forårsofret Solo exhibition at ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark
Danish artist Eva Helene Pade makes her institutional debut, presenting her first-ever museum solo show, Forårsofret, at ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, Denmark, opening on 10 April 2025. Pade is known for her figurative paintings thatexplore the complexities of human relationships and female embodiment.
In Eva Helene Pade’s compositions, dreamlike, open-ended narratives fuse with themythological as she draws from a lineage of Northern European artists, including Edvard Munch, James Ensor and Otto Dix. Starting as ‘coordinates’ on the canvas, figures emerge from layers of paint, forming clusters and crowds or become singled out amid complex configurations. Faces materialise from fluid brushstrokes, and full-length bodies seem to multiply and interlock, fracturing into rich, jewel-toned passages. The exhibition at ARKEN features new monumental works and is curated by Rasmus Stenbakken. Its title, Forårsofret – which translates to ‘The Spring Sacrifice’, or ‘The Rite of Spring’ – in reference to the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet, which premiered at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, in 1913.
The works on view make up a single, interconnected narrative inspired by Stravinsky’s story, in which a young virgin girl is sacrificed to the god of spring in a pagan ritual to herald the arrival of the new season. Pade takes inspiration from German choreographer Pina Bausch’s 1975 interpretation of the Le Sacre du printemps. In this version, the dancer’s bodies meld into one, becoming instruments capable of eloquently expressing the unspoken and the invisible. Merging historical references with contemporary modes of painterly expression, Pade’s new works push towards the transcendental to a sense of the self beyond the body. ‘In Eva Helene Pade’s take on the theme, the narrative of sacrifice and victimhood is turned upside down,’ says ARKEN curator Rasmus Stenbakken. ‘Here, the female protagonist becomes a figure of strength, power and agency. The paintings possess a striking primordial power, poignantly expressive of yearning, loneliness, joy and suffering.’
