Hélène was born in 1995 in a rural beach town in Brittany, France. After an initial education in textile arts, she graduated from an MFA in Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy in Cergy in 2023. She has recently exhibited her work at the Brooklyn Museum (New York), Ygrec (Paris) and read her poetry at the Centre International de la Poésie (Marseille) and Le Centre Wallonie Bruxelles (Paris). She is currently pursuing a master of Aesthetics and Politics at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.
Influenced by Sara Ahmed’s theories on emotions as shared social constructs, Hélène shapes elliptic short stories to challenge conventional narratives. Through her hide-and-seek approach, she engages with the threads of loss, desire, and fantasy that bind us to one another and the world. Hélène works with light as a primary material, using filters, fabrics, folds, and electrical circuits to explore dynamics of concealment and revelation. The stitch, the thread, and the gesture of weaving together heterogeneous elements are recurring motifs, layering themes of ambiguous affect and intimate ties throughout her practice.
"To me, many of Hélène’s sculptures embody a movement that oscillates between feelings of detachment and adhesion—both with oneself and the world. This relationship with otherness, both individual and collective, reminds me of an idea uttered by Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which has long resonated with me. The writer suggests “not focusing on the flow, but on one’s own breath. Don’t follow the external rhythm, but breathe normally”.
I tie these words to the two sculptures in Our Conversations, which breathe in and out in response to one another until they fall into complete desynchronization. Here, arrhythmias emerge, producing and highlighting a necessary dysfunction."
Influenced by Sara Ahmed’s theories on emotions as shared social constructs, Hélène shapes elliptic short stories to challenge conventional narratives. Through her hide-and-seek approach, she engages with the threads of loss, desire, and fantasy that bind us to one another and the world. Hélène works with light as a primary material, using filters, fabrics, folds, and electrical circuits to explore dynamics of concealment and revelation. The stitch, the thread, and the gesture of weaving together heterogeneous elements are recurring motifs, layering themes of ambiguous affect and intimate ties throughout her practice.
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"To me, many of Hélène’s sculptures embody a movement that oscillates between feelings of detachment and adhesion—both with oneself and the world. This relationship with otherness, both individual and collective, reminds me of an idea uttered by Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which has long resonated with me. The writer suggests “not focusing on the flow, but on one’s own breath. Don’t follow the external rhythm, but breathe normally”.
I tie these words to the two sculptures in Our Conversations, which breathe in and out in response to one another until they fall into complete desynchronization. Here, arrhythmias emerge, producing and highlighting a necessary dysfunction."
Elise Legal