ELENA HELFRECHT: PLEXUS


CREDITS

GUP Author

GUP Team


Artist

Elena Helfrecht

Artist Website

elenahelfrecht.com

The work of Elena Helfrecht (b. 1992, Germany) revolves around inner space and the phenomena of consciousness, emerging from an autobiographical context and expanding into the surreal and the fantastic – and even, at times, the grotesque. Helfrecht grew up in the Bavarian countryside, and the folklore and landscapes of her childhood are rooted in her heart and influence her artistic activities. Interweaving memories, experiences, and imagination, she creates a seemingly inextricable narrative containing multiple layers of meaning and characterised by a visceral iconography.

Plexus explores the influence of the family on psychological and cultural processes within history. It is a photographic case study through archival still lifes, highlighting the effects of inherited trauma and third-generation post-memory.”Finding documents and artifacts which lost their history and became indecipherable, I add my own narrative to what is left unknown, to create a metaphor transgressing personal and national boundaries,” says Helfrecht. Connecting the past and the present, the editing results in dream-like environments.

 

In 2019 Elena Helfrecht completed her MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London, after receiving her BA in Art History and Book Science from Friedrich- Alexander-University in Erlangen in 2015 and briefly studying Art and Image History at Humboldt-University in Berlin from 2016 to 2017.