Areas of Search was first exhibited in an installation at the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Sheffield Cathedral (October 2024), as part of the art strand of the No Bounds Festival. This strand was curated and produced by Amy Carter-Gordon.
“I am deeply honoured and humbled to receive the Best Video Art Award at the Asolo Art Film Festival in Italy—one of the world’s oldest and most respected festivals dedicated to art and cinema and a detachment from Venice Biennale. This recognition echoes far beyond me. To have my work recognised by an organisation that has awarded artists such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Aleksandr Sokurov, and Ingrid Bergman is both surreal and profoundly meaningful. My short film Areas of Search confronts femicide—a subject that carries unbearable weight, urgency, and silence. I accept this award with profound gratitude to the jury and especially in solidarity with the Mexican women who have shared their stories and experiences in the brutality of femicide. This work belongs to them. Thank you to the festival for seeing the value in art as a tool for witnessing, remembrance, and resistance. May this recognition not only honour artistic vision, but also amplify the voices that are too often unheard.”
“In Helen Blejerman’s work, Areas of Search, images (from Google Earth) of a Mexico seemingly emptied of human presence flow like a visual carpet, forming the backdrop to the voice (the artist herself) of a soul searching for its remains, thus representing a doubly unreal world. The estrangement is heightened by the water flowing backwards, almost expressing a longing to return to time, to life. The theme of loss, both personal and collective, permeates the work, as does the gaze upon the landscape. For these reasons and the lyricism of its composition, it was awarded the prize for the best video artwork.” Enrico Tomaselli, member of the jury—from the Festival’s catalogue.
Thank you to these Italian publications for writing about the films awarded at the Asolo Art Film Festival: Cinema Italiano, Treviso Today, Sipario, and Federazione Relazioni Pubbliche Italiana.
The Luminous Mysteries is a short film dedicated to Claudia Uruchurtu, a Mexican activist who was forcibly disappeared for her political activism during a demonstration on the 26th of March, 2021, in her home town, Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, Mexico.
As Sure as the Rain is a feature-length essay film by artist Nick Stweart, co-written and co-edited by artist Helen Blejerman.
BOOKS
The full work Women Artists Under the Nazi Regime was published in the special edition of the journal Literature and Belief, edited by Professor Victoria Aarons from Trinity University (2021).
The experimental graphic novel was published in French by Presque Lune Éditions, France (2014). This hardcover French version can be purchased at the main bookstores in French-speaking countries or directly from the publisher.
The work explores the strength of dreams and the impact that a paranoid mother has on the imagination of her seven-year-old daughter. This is a story where we see the landscapes and the words and thoughts of the characters, but we do not see their bodies. This is a short graphic narrative that reveals an old family secret.
Lulu la Sensationnelle in the Best Graphic Novels of 2019
“A story told with great economy and poetry… a faceless silent movie of a graphic novel.”
Broken Frontier, May 2019. Full review by Jenny Robins, here.
“A book of remarkable sensitivity.”
Planetebd.com 25 Feb 2015. Full review by Sarah Dehove, here.
“Lulu la sensationnelle is a gem. Intelligent, psychological, suffused with poetry.”
First page of BODOI. 25 Feb 2015. Full review by Laurence Le Saux, here.
“Poetic writing.”
Médiathèque de Deux-Sèvres. Full review by Mireille, MDDS here
“Un livre très surprenant.”
A radio review that starts at 1.24.00 min- La Radio JET FM de Nantes, Nov 2014.
“A graphic elixir where time stops.”
Mes Premières Lectures. Full review by Nelly Olson.
“A particularly moving book!”
Canal BD, Oct/Nov 2014. Full text here.
“Une histoire émouvante et poétique qui aborde avec délicatesse la maladie mentale et ses conséquences sur la vie familiale.”
Dbd Magazine, Dec 2014/Jan 2015. Full text here.
Translated into English (2019).
The story ‘The Island’ was included in this issue by the Centre for Poetry and Poetics and the Creative Writing Department at Sheffield University. The book was launched at the Traces and Invisible Wounds event in November 2020.
The short story ‘Synesthesia’, was included in the book ‘Sheffield’. Ed. Emma Bolland, published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
An experimental and conceptual, detectivesque story of love and self-sabotage. It takes us from Mexico City in 2017 to Puerto de Veracruz after the Mexican Revolution in the 1930s. The artist undertook the writing of this book after finding a pack of love letters in a flea market in Mexico City. She chose to trace and fictionalise the journey of the author, Tito, an aspiring filmmaker and son of one of the ‘mad women of the revolution’ inhabitants of the Nautla Psychiatric Hospital.
RADIO
Deciphering the City
I walked in and around the borders of Sheffield, England, and I took notes of my impressions. I read my notes creating four one-hour recordings. These were broadcast weekly by Radio Sheffield and produced by Mind Labs. My recorded impressions as a foreigner returned to the urban land, via the radio signals.
Is a metropolis something one could decipher? How to discover its real substance, the centre of its essence? I wonder if the truth of a city is based on its history or does it lie in its own present. Perhaps it becomes projected onto what others perceive, or it is reflected in what it inspires in others. Images from films and literature influence the collective imagination about a place, but Umberto Eco says in his essay The Line and the Labyrinth “Culture is not possible without recognising a border”.
El Jardín de Nuestra Lengua (Our Language Garden)
This is a radio project I wrote in 2012 and co-produced with cultural Radio UNAM 96.1 fm, Mexico City—fifteen vignettes 7 minutes long). In each transmission, I spoke with a Mexican person based in Britain and asked them to bring with them a meaningful Mexican word and a personal story connected to that word. We looked at the dictionary to see the origin and the use, but above all, we listened to the intimate anecdote; we engaged in the guest’s memory. And we felt how that allowed closing the gap—with language—between the person and their homeland.
Broadcast by Radio Sheffield Live 93.2 fm March 2012 and by Radio UNAM in Mexico City, September 2012 and January 2015. Radio UNAM, producers Emiliano López Rascón and Arfaxad Ortiz; research: philosopher Paniel Reyes Cárdenas, musicalization: Xanic Galván Nieto (In Spanish).
Our Language Garden
We played a language game with the audience and people in the studio based on my project Our Language Garden. The first rule was to say a word that bring back memories.
Helen Blejerman 