The felling of Daphne

VITRINE is delighted to announce the solo exhibition of emerging Spanish artist Paula Santomé at VITRINE Basel.

Working across sculpture, reliefs and drawing, Santomé explores youth culture through the lens of feminism and fringe models of resistance.

For her solo exhibition at VITRINE, Santomé has created contemporary interpretations of religious and mythological stories inspired by the representation of women in the Western canon of the second half of the 19th century; a period that Santomé considers to be a male reaction to the early women’s suffragette movements and the first feminist wave.

Presented as part of the exhibition is a series of new hand embossed aluminium reliefs, inspired by pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist paintings that project a patriarchal view of evil creation through the female icon. ‘Spes tva, carceris mei’ (2023) depicts two women, one spitting into a box and another crouched down to touch a snake. The work is inspired by paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John William Waterhouse of the infamous story of Pandora’s box. The myth tells of a box given to Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus from the Gods for stealing fire from heaven which Pandora opens and releases sickness, death and suffering into the world.