Helen Teede

Teede is a visual artist from Zimbabwe, working primarily in painting since 2013. Before embarking on her BFA at Michaelis in Cape town, Teede first studied painting at Florence University of the Arts. She chose to return to Italy for her Masters ...

Teede is a visual artist from Zimbabwe, working primarily in painting since 2013. Before embarking on her BFA at Michaelis in Cape town, Teede first studied painting at Florence University of the Arts. She chose to return to Italy for her Masters in Visual Art at IUAV University of Venice, which she completed in 2020 with 110/110 Honours with a thesis and exhibition exploring, “Phenomenology of Painting as an Intersectional Medium”. Her thesis, “Phenomenology of Painting as an Intersectional Medium” reflects on storytelling through painting as a medium that comprises ongoing formations, relying on situated knowledge and material thinking as ways of knowing that rejects ideas of total, objective knowledge, and embraces the importance of process, curiosity, failure and the acceptance of paradox. Finishing her MFA during lockdown in Venice has catalysed the need to articulate and situate the complicity of humans in the ecological. Introducing the drawn figure and text, created a shift from the gestural and emotive lushness of earlier work towards greater precision and clarity.