Helen Teede
Helen Teede was born in Zimbabwe in 1988 and currently lives and works in Harare. Having graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, Teede returned to Zimbabwe with a commitment to the country, both as a person and as an artist. As a white Zimbabwean, Teede remains deeply conscious of the painful and conflicted history of race relations in the country. Reconciliation and integration are yet to be fully realised.
Nevertheless, Zimbabwe is the only home that she has ever known and she loves it without reservation. In her practice as a painter Teede has taken her love for the land as a defining Zimbabwean characteristic that transcends race, gender, and political lines, using it as a starting point from which to build a vision that can be shared by all. Teede researches her work from the ground up, quite literally, by going on extensive hiking and camping expeditions that involve archeological digs, embedding her work in the land and its history. Her landscape based canvases build narratives of these journeys, which are both poetic and aspirational. They speak empathetically to a shared humanity and commitment to be of a place and of a time, making the prospect of genuine reconciliation and a future possible.