about

work

My practice is a direct confrontation with the immense and often paralysing realities of our time. To fully encapsulate this, I coined the term Apocalyptic Expressionism  – a multi-disciplinary practice investigating how we confront our own powerlessness in the face of cataclysmic events and functioning as a form of ritualistic atonement – wrestling with the human condition at the brink of ecological, technological, and psychological event horizons. The work provides a space for contemplation, reckoning, and for the collective grief we intrinsically share.

In my sculptures, the discarded materials of human engineering, embedded with our pyrrhic accomplishments, are transformed through a process of ritualistic labor. I tear, twist, and weave them into intricate forms that evoke a sense of organic structure and become a memento mori for our era and tenacious attempts at mending in the face of entropy.

My drawings are a meditative counterpoint. Through the repetitive application of dots, I create enigmatic compositions that echo the macro and the micro, the individual and the collective, destruction and procreation – as above, so below.

Demanding bodily engagement, the viewer becomes a witness to material memory, interdependence, and interconnectedness. The pieces delve into our hidden selves. They serve to question our indoctrinations, uncomfortably exploring how our personal histories and collective futures are inextricably bound. Our existence is defined only through our relationship to something else – where the personal meets the political. And whatever state we inhabit now will inevitably shift, reminding  us of impermanence as we grapple with our impotence to stop these upheavals.. The work holds space for contemplation and for the grief we must move through, before we can become catalysts for radical change.

 

artist
b. 1977 Sweden
(Polish/Croatian from USA)
she/they
victoria helena is a multinational artist based in London while maintaining an international practice. Raised in a Polish, Croatian, and Catholic working class tradition as an undocumented immigrant in the US for most of their childhood, victoria helena quickly learned the profound importance of diasporic assimilation and ‘passing privilege’. This unique lived experience, further complicated by neurodivergence, queerness, the entanglements of abuse, epigenetics of war, and complex trauma, indelibly informs their multidisciplinary work as it traverses varying states of powerlessness and hope. 

victoria helena currently maintains a studio practice in Hackney. In addition to commissioned public artworks, victoria helena’s pieces reside in private collections across the United States and Europe. They are an alumnus of the Royal College of Art, having earned a Masters in Sculpture with distinction in 2019. victoria helena has also participated in the 58th International Venice Biennale, been shortlisted for the prestigious Mark Tanner Sculpture Prize, the Ingot Prize, and completed the coveted Benson-Sedgwick Residency.