Artist Profile Helen Shulkin

Shulkin masterfully oscillates between structural and corporeal forms toward a new fragility.

Artist Statement

My practice investigates the profound parallels between built environments and the human form, a connection I first observed in cities ravaged by conflict. Collapsed buildings and shattered infrastructure appeared to me as wounded bodies, each bearing the imprint of trauma yet clinging to resilience. Through my paintings, I dissect architectural forms to reveal their underlying anatomy—fusing concrete and flesh, steel and blood—to highlight our shared fragility and endurance.

Informed by the theories of Carl Jung, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre, my work engages viewers on both conscious and subconscious levels. Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious elucidates how archetypal images of the wounded body resonate universally, while Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of embodiment and Sartre’s reflections on the body’s extension into physical space shape my treatment of the built world as a living, permeable entity. These ideas challenge us to see architecture not as a neutral backdrop but as an active participant in our lived experience.

Architecture as a Human Body is both a conceptual framework and a call to action. By merging architectural and anatomical imagery, I invite architects, artists, and theorists to reconsider how we design and inhabit our spaces—encouraging us to embrace cities as extensions of our own corporeality, intimately bound to the vulnerabilities and possibilities of human existence.

Artist Biography

Helen Shulkin was born in Belarus and completed a Fine Art and Drawing degree under Professor Shikulov at the Belarusian State University in Minsk in 2001. Currently based in Hamburg, she has exhibited her work internationally in solo, two-person, and group shows, including the Durden and Ray Gallery in Los Angeles, D-Contemporary in London, Municipal Museum of Weilburg an der Lahn, and Bonn Women’s Museum in Germany. Recognized with honors such as the award of Osten Biennial of Drawing in Skopje, her work is represented by galleries including the MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture (MPAC) in Zürich, Von Fraunberg Art Gallery in Düsseldorf, and Anise Gallery in London.

Shulkin’s work explores the profound connections between human anatomy and architectural form, drawing on existential and phenomenological philosophies. Her conceptual framework, titled Architecture as a Human Body, examines the parallels between the vulnerabilities and resilience of urban structures and the human body.

As a curator, Shulkin has organized exhibitions of Belarusian protest art in collaboration with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany. Shulkin’s paintings reside in public and private collections, such as the German Literary Archive Marbach, the State Library Berlin, and corporate collections worldwide.