Eva Helene Pade: Forårsofret Solo exhibition at ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark

The Danish artist Eva Helene Pade (b. 1997) experiments with the art history of the Western world, where past and present merge into dream-like narratives. Central to Pade's artistic work is a new painterly approach to depicting female embodiment today.

For the exhibition at ARKEN, Pade presents a monumental series of new works created especially for the exhibition. The paintings are inspired by composer Igor Stravinsky's famous ballet Le Sacre du Printemps from 1913 and choreographer Pina Bausch's interpretation of the same from 1975. The ballet introduces us to a pagan myth, in which Pade's paintings turn the work's sacrificial narrative on its head and turn the female protagonist into a powerful focal point of action. The paintings contain a primordial force that expresses longing, loneliness, joy and suffering.

Eva Helene Pade graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2024, and the exhibition at ARKEN is the artist's first exhibition in an art museum.