Intense eyes meet you everywhere you look in Apolonia Sokol's colorful paintings. Powerful and possessed of great immediacy, they evolved from her life in the rebellious, artistic Parisian underground scene. The paintings form a colourful, intimate personal gallery of the artist's friends, family and lovers. People of different ethnicities and gender identities — tenderly portrayed and presented right at eye level.

Images have power, and Sokol uses it to open our eyes to the human beings behind them. Sokol often utilises a traditional portrait format, but she doesn't immortalise rulers and kings. Her models are artists and activists on the fringes of society, whom she imbues with significance, agency and authority through her portraits. Sokol's entire artistic practice is characterised by an interweaving of the motifs of art history and her own life among people who break with societal norms and want to change the world. She, herself, says it is impossible for her to separate her art and her identity.

French-Polish Apolonia Sokol was born in France in 1988. In Paris, she grew up in the bohemian environment of her parents' avant-garde theatre. Her childhood home became a springboard for her artistic life and career. She has also lived in Denmark for part of her childhood and youth.

Apolonia Sokol graduated in 2015 from one of Europe's finest and most traditional art academies, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and today she isa professor at the École Supérieure d'Arts et Médias in Caen/Cherbourg.

Every day during the exhibition period, you can watch the critically acclaimed and internationally award-winning documentary on Apolonia Sokol's life and her path, strewn with obstacles, towards an international career as an artist. The film is shown Wednesday-Sunday at 14:30 and Thursday at 18:45 in ARKEN's Film Hall. Duration 2 hours. The film is included in the price of admission to the museum.