The Ballehage Woman was created by Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum for the outdoor sculpture exhibition Sculpture by the Sea, organised by AROS Museum in Aarhus in 2009. An actor dressed as The Ballehage Woman roamed the underbush of Marselisborg Forest near the Ballehage neighbourhood every night at dusk for a month. Her head was made of cardboard squares, and as she walked she produced sad and disturbing sounds audible to late-night strollers and joggers. Occasionally she would enter well-lit areas briefly before disappearing when confronted.

Her home was a makeshift cardboard shelter resembling her head. The cardboard boxes were imprinted with logos of Tessellax, a fictitious medical company claiming to cure Involuntary Tessellation, a condition causing uncontrolled growth of square body parts.

Simultaneously with the physical performances, stories of The Ballehage Woman were disseminated across media including a website, YouTube video, Google ads, newspaper articles, and emails. The artists sent unsolicited emails to residents of the Ballehage area warning of an epidemic of Involuntary Tessellation and offering cures with a link to tessellax.com, a fake medical website based on an altered AIDS treatment site. Google ads for tessellax.com used keywords like AROS and Sculpture by the Sea.

A local newspaper printed an account of a witness encounter with The Ballehage Woman, sponsored by tessellax.com as advertising disguised as news. On YouTube, the video “Ballehage Woman Sighting” shows the figure moving through Marselisborg Forest.

The project constructed a local myth about a deformed outcast living in a park frequented by wealthy residents. By framing the narrative as a myth, the artists connected the story of The Ballehage Woman to broader experiences of people excluded from society due to norms around appearance and behavior in Denmark.