Helen Teede

Born in: 1988
From: Harare, Zimbabwe
Lives and works: Harare, Zimbabwe
Represented by: First Floor Gallery Harare

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Biography

Although grounded on abstraction, Helen Teede’s colorful canvases look over Zimbabwe’s harsh history of racial segregation and turbulent politics. Using painting as her main vehicle, the wobbly lines of her work create an atmosphere within the canvas conveying an unearthly cosmos, despite being ingrained in everyday life. For the artist, reconciliation in her home country –a crucial step to move forward– can only be achieved through a common ground embodied by nature. Her painting expresses her love for land and her concern to preserve it, thus transforming the genre into a highly political field evoking concrete issues.

From that perspective, Teede’s work is comparable to that of Danish artist Per Kirkeby, both sharing a profound passion for nature. His intense compositions are also akin to Teede’s work, bringing them closer in form as well as intent.

However, her inclination for spiritual themes links her with abstract artists from the beginning of the 20th century such as Frantisek Kupka: reverberating lines and a profusion of color connect these artists across time, bridging abstraction to social causes.