The Genuine Space of Skin and Personal Being
October 2026
by Maria Belton
General Introduction
In a world saturated with images, information and noise, Danish artist and philosopher Helene Lundbye Petersen has built an entire artistic universe around connection, presence, and colour. Her life’s work, /WhitePageProject, began with a single gesture : the offering of a blank white page — and has since evolved into a living, breathing artwork that weaves together philosophy, performance, writing, and painting. At its core lies a call to return to what she names the Genuine: the raw, unfiltered resonance between self, other, and existence itself. Through her Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being, each hue becomes a space of emotion and insight — an experience to enter rather than a concept to grasp.
The Pink Space
Following Brown, Pink appears in the Colour Spectrum. What kind of space does it represent?
It represents the very experience of Personal Being, the space beneath our skin. It is connected to The Pink Book — On Skin, the Private, the Intimate, and the Erotic. Where the outer layer of skin tans or pales depending on sunlight, the inner skin is pink in every human being. In that sense, pink becomes a universal colour of Personal being.
It is also where our nerve threads are located, so it is literally where we sense and feel the experience of being alive. So the Pink Space is fundamentally about the unique, personal being that each of us carries within.
You describe the Pink Book as unfolding in three parts: Private, Intimate, and Erotic. Could you explain these layers?
The book is divided into three movements: the private, the intimate, and the erotic.
The private is the space that belongs only to you. It is the place where you encounter yourself — where your genuine personal being exists without the presence of anyone else.
The intimate begins when you allow another person to see something from that private space. Here, intimacy does not mean physical closeness, but names the moment when you reveal something genuine about yourself — or when you recognise that genuine presence in another person.
The erotic emerges when the private connection to ones genuine being, and shared intimacy of seeing and openness towards another also manifests physically. Where ones pink space momentarily melt together with the pink space of another.
I am aware that these words carry strong cultural associations, but within the Pink Space this is how I define them. Together they describe the delicate movement between self and other. The book reminds us that this space belongs to you. You are in charge of letting others in and recognising when others open themselves toward you.
So its a book about borders and boundaries?
Yes. The Pink Book ultimately reminds us that this Pink space belongs to you. It is yours alone. You decide when to open it and when to protect it. And you must learn to recognise when someone else opens themselves toward you. In that sense, the Pink Space becomes a reflection on borders and boundaries.
There is a line in The Pink Book that says:
If you open yourself too much, you will lose yourself.
If you open yourself too little, you will lose the world.
Pink exists precisely within that balance.
Only you can know where that boundary lies — what is too much, and what is too little.
How do these ideas translate into the visual works connected to Pink?
The two pink paintings explore boundaries and their openings.
One painting represents the border itself — the line that protects the private space.
The other painting represents the moment when that border opens and something passes through. And here the border looks like nerve threads, something penetrating, permeating.
In this way the two works belong together. One holds the boundary; the other holds the movement across it.
As with the other paintings in this Colour Spectrum of Genuine Being Series, the Pink paintings are intentionally minimal. A line, a form, a colour. But that simplicity carries profound meaning. The opening of a boundary — the moment when a personal being connects with what they genuinely feel, or allows another presence to enter — is one of the most profound, delicate and magical movements in human life.
Portraying Skin Outside, Marais, Paris, During the Covid Pandemic, Photo by Morten Eggert, 2021.
What do you hope people experience when they encounter the Pink works?
Perhaps a moment of recognition. A pause to see the private, intimate, and uniquely personal space within themselves.
Pink reminds us that each of us carries a private inner space that belongs only to us as something that must be both protected, but also shared with awareness.
Life unfolds in the movement between
the space we keep for ourselves
and the space we dare to open.
Here we must learn to navigate how to move between those two.
It is in this delicate interplay — the opening of a boundary, the recognition of another’s inner space — that we find connection, trust, and genuine being.
In the Pink Space, we are invited to hold both protection and openness, learning that the deepest engagement with life comes from the conscious balance of intimacy, boundaries, and presence. It is here — in the space we guard and the space we allow to open — that our most genuine being is experienced.
To read more about the Pink Space, dive into her exhibition here: The Pink Space
Find the Pink Print that calls to you:
