Born in Belarus, Helen Shulkin graduated with a Specialist Diploma in Fine Arts and Drawing (specialization: Folk Arts and Crafts) from the Belarusian State Pedagogical University named after Maksim Tank (BSPU), Minsk, Belarus. She has been based in Norderstedt (Hamburg metropolitan region), Germany, since 2020.

Statement

I treat architecture as a proxy anatomy—an exterior that carries internal stresses, scars, and modes of repair. The city, in this sense, is not an image to be depicted but a body to be read: load-bearing logic, ruptures, sutures, and the quiet labor of staying upright. What appears as façade becomes epidermis; what collapses is not only structure but a distributed physiology of passage, shelter, and circulation.

Working in oil on canvas and incision-based works on paper, I build dense, gestural surfaces and then cut back into them—scraping, reopening, repainting—until the breach becomes part of the structure. The painting is constructed as a site that can be entered and revised, not resolved. On paper I score the sheet with a scalpel; at times pigment releases from beneath the surface at the moment of the cut, turning incision into a mechanism of disclosure. These operations are not illustrative violence: they are a method for making the surface accountable to what it covers.

My works hold a double register. They read as fragments of built space—plans, sections, collapsed elevations—while functioning as bodily diagrams without naming the body. I’m interested in how damage becomes legible, how repair leaves its own architecture, and how a shared, impersonal memory of wounding can be embedded in materials rather than narrated. The result is a field where structure and vulnerability are inseparable, and where the cut is not an ending but a new load-bearing line.

EDUCATION

1996-2001 Fine Arts and Drawing (specialization: Folk Arts and Crafts), Specialist Diploma, Belarusian State Pedagogical University named after Maksim Tank (BSPU), Minsk, Belarus

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2025 NORDWESTKUNST, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Wilhelmshaven, Germany (nominated)
2025 48th Art Prize of the Cultural Foundation of Sparkasse Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany (nominated)
2025 The Shape it Takes, Galerie Grolman, Berlin, Germany
2025 Structures, KURA Gallery, Hamburg, Germany (two-person exhibition)
2024 Future Perfect, Durden and Ray Gallery, Los Angeles, US
2023 FORWARD, Von Fraunberg Art Gallery & Taylor Wessing, Düsseldorf, Germany
2023 Unheimlich.Grossartig, Atelierhaus Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
2022 Moving Cities: a changing metropolis, Anise Gallery, London, UK (two-person exhibition)
2021 Inspire, D-Contemporary Gallery, London, UK
2021 Solo exhibition within the framework of the KinoHafen forum, Kommunales Kino METROPOLIS, Hamburg, Germany (funded by the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media)
2020 OSTEN Biennial of Drawing, National Gallery of North Macedonia, Skopje, North Macedonia (nominated)
2020 Cultivate Presents, Cultivate Gallery, London, UK
2018 Solo exhibition of prize-winning artists (OSTEN Biennial of Drawing), Gallery OSTEN, Skopje, North Macedonia
2017 Great Escapes, Nude Tin Can Gallery, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK
2017, Strom, QQArt Gallery, Hilden, Germany

ART FAIRS

2025 Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, The Summer Edition, London, UK (represented by Anise Gallery)
2024 Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, London, UK (represented by Anise Gallery)

BENEFIT / CHARITY (SELECTED)

2021 Charity auction (benefit), in cooperation with Sotheby’s and Rotary Clubs Vienna-West, Vienna, Austria

CURATORIAL PRACTICE & ACTIVISM

2020 Founder and Director, New Belarus Art (gUG), Germany — a non-profit platform supporting Belarusian artists impacted by political repression and displacement
2021 Hostages, exhibition of Belarusian protest art (curator), in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, St. Martini Church, Braunschweig, Germany
2020 Hostages, exhibition of Belarusian protest art (curator), in cooperation with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany (Nordkirche), St. Petri Church, Hamburg, Germany
2020 Identification, exhibition of Belarusian protest art (curator), in cooperation with the Nordkirche, St. Mary’s Church, Lübeck, Germany

NOMINATIONS & AWARDS

2025 Nomination: NORDWESTKUNST 2025, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Germany
2025 Nomination: 48th Art Prize of the Cultural Foundation of Sparkasse Karlsruhe, Germany
2020 Nomination: OSTEN Biennial of Drawing, Skopje, North Macedonia (National Gallery of North Macedonia / Gallery OSTEN)
2018 Winner: OSTEN Award (individual presentation), OSTEN Biennial of Drawing, North Macedonia (National Gallery of North Macedonia / Gallery OSTEN)
2016 Nomination: OSTEN Biennial of Drawing, Skopje, North Macedonia (National Gallery of North Macedonia / Gallery OSTEN)
2016 Nomination: Art Award of the Town of Weilburg an der Lahn, Municipal Museum, Weilburg, Germany
2016 Nomination: Art Award of the Town of Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany

PUBLICATIONS

2023 I Will Survive, Body & Soul, No. 41, Corvinus Presse, Berlin, Germany. (handbound artist publication; signed original work)
2023 Ritmo, color y composición, THE CORE Design (special issue: CHAIN + SIMAN+ Architectural Design), text by Nayeli Hernández Flores, pp. 58–67, Mexico City, Mexico, 2023
2021 Image All the People, Body & Soul, No. 36a, Corvinus Presse, Berlin, Germany. (handbound artist publication; signed original work)
2020 People Have the Power, Body & Soul, No. 33, Corvinus Presse, Berlin, Germany. (handbound artist publication; signed original work)
2017 You’ll Never Walk Alone, Body & Soul, No. 28, Corvinus Presse, Berlin, Germany. (handbound artist publication; signed original work)
2016 Early One Morning, Body & Soul, No. 26, Corvinus Presse, Berlin, Germany. (handbound artist publication; signed original work)
2018 The Best Abstract Artist of the Month, The Guide Artists Magazine, Issue 14, April, Spain.
2018 Cover image / feature, Office et Culture, Issue 48, Paris, France.
2018 Posturbanity, ARTICULATE, Issue 15, Denmark.

COLLECTIONS

German Literature Archive Marbach, Germany — signed original works published in Body & Soul / Corvinus Presse
Berlin State Library, Germany — signed original works published in Body & Soul / Corvinus Presse
Corporate collections (selected): Rolfe Judd (London); MATTER Architects (Auckland); Blankpage Architects (Beirut)

GALLERIES & COLLABORATIONS

Anise Gallery, London, UK
Von Fraunberg Art Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany
MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture (MPAC), Zurich, Switzerland (offspace / project space)