Helen Teede
STATEMENT
I have always struggled to translate ideas into images, preferring to work with what I can see and touch. As I go about my day, I often stop and ask myself, “Could this be a painting?” Sometimes an atmosphere gathers around a specific moment or object. My work begins in this proximity to things. I tend to draw imagery from the domestic space, where close observation of something familiar can expand into the uncanny. Large questions come from small things.
I use raw pigment, oil, plant dyes and soil in fluid washes, subject to chance and failure. Pigment soaks into the canvas, or sits lightly on the top of it, giving the feeling that you could blow it and colour would fly into the air. This volatile materiality sits in tension with figurative elements, the canvases operating as windows into intimate and dream-like spaces while at the same time remaining tactile and immediate.
Committed to the negative dialectic in painting, I deliberately keep my paintings irresolute, drawing out the tensions between image and material, subject and object, sign and its collapse. It is important that painting is both retroactive and generative, remaining self-critical, aware of its history and its action in the world. For me, this happens most effectively when grounded in the immediate environment. It makes me pay attention to the world in proximity and this allows space for the unthinkable.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026
— Relics, First Floor Gallery: Harare, Zimbabwe
2023
— Cocoon, First Floor Gallery: Harare, Zimbabwe
2022
— Ce la Faremo, Tong Advisory Soho Salon: New York, USA
2021
— Artemisia, First Floor Gallery Harare: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
2019
— Bare Limbs, First Floor Gallery Harare: Harare, Zimbabwe
2018
— Without Breaking Anything, Matter Gallery: Toronto, Canada
2017
— Unhomed, Showcase Gallery: Dubai, U.A.E
2016
— It is the Without, First Floor Gallery Harare: Harare, Zimbabwe
2015
— The Material Presence of the Past, Showcase Gallery: Dubai, U.A.E.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025
— Taona, 3-person show, First Floor Gallery and Schwartzman & Projects: New York, USA
2024
— Kuvhunura: l’Ecole d’Harare, Fondation Blachere, Bonniex, France
— 58, PM/AM Gallery, London, UK
— TEARS: The Final Show, the Tracey Emin Foundation, TKE Studios: Margate, United Kingdom
— Landscape, Alice Folker Gallery: Copenhagen, Denmark
2023
— TEARS Summer Show, the Tracey Emin Foundation, TKE Studios: Margate, United Kingdom
2022
— See You Through It, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, Worcester, MA, USA
— In the Zone, Alice Folker Gallery: Copenhagen, Denmark
— If you Will it, It is not a Dream: Zimbabwean Women Artists in Focus, Artemisia Art Advisory: Harare, Zimbabwe
— The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize finalist exhibition, The Norval Foundation: Cape Town, South Africa
2021
— Running – The New Contemporary, Qingdao Art Museum: Shanghai, PRC.
— Ubuntu: I Am Because We Are, with the Africana Foundation at the World Trade Centre: Geneva, Switzerland
— Paris Internationale, Artemisia Nova, solo presentation with First Floor Gallery Harare: Paris, France
— I Draw Therefore I Think, South South and First Floor Gallery Harare, Online and in Harare, Zimbabwe
— House Parté, Carlye Packer: Palm Springs, Los Angeles, USA
— Mundopa, Makaza, Rizhi, Teede, Tong Advisory Soho Salon: New York, USA
— Allegory and Intent, three person show, Nomad Gallery: Brussels, Belgium
2020
— Body Language, two-person show, Nomad Gallery: Brussels, Belgium
— Level: Mosi-oa-Tunya, First Floor Gallery Harare: Victoria Falls, Zimbabw
2019
— Interceptions, Matter Galery: Toronto, Canada
2018
— Five Bobh, survey of contemporary Zimbabwean art, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art: Cape Town, South Africa
2017
— Another Antipodes: Urban Axis, First Floor Gallery Harare and Another Antipodes Inc., PS Art Space: Perth, Australia
2016
— Harare: Mwandiambira + Tuazeni + Teede, three-person show, Hazard Gallery: Johannesburg, South Africa
2014
— Modern Painting, Kalk Bay Modern: Cape Town, South Africa
— Scripts of our Unspoken Words, Showcase Gallery: Dubai, U.A.E.
2013
— Greatest Hits of 2012, AVA Gallery: Cape Town, South Africa
RESIDENCIES AND GRANTS
2024
— Arts Council England Grant: Developing your creative practice, UK
2023/4
— Tracey Emin Art Residency, Margate, UK.
2018
— Africa First Residency, Tel Aviv, Israel.