Hélène Cenedese

Born in 1973, Hélène Cenedese lives and works in Montreal as a painter and as a social worker. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in visual arts from Concordia University (2007) with distinction. She works simultaneously in both fields, and the abodes she visits, as well as the individuals experiencing a loss of autonomy whom she helps, form part of her creative process. She has received several prizes for her œuvre, and participates in important art fairs in Toronto, New York and Miami. Her work can be found in private collections in Canada, in Italy, in Japan, in Norway, and, in the United States. As of 2017, she is represented by Galerie C.O.A.

Helene Cenedese’s pictorial language has evolved from abstract raw monochrome to colourful figurative cartoonish work. Objects of the familiar and the mundane, interiors, personnages, random clothes observed through homes visits as a social worker are part of her visual landscape. Influenced by pop culture, hip hop streetwear, 1980’s and 1990’s fashion as well as instagram, she uses images collected from the web as narrative in her compositions. Playful and humorous, her compositions often reflect a distorted reality.

The mark making is present through expressive contour lines. Her instinctive and unfiltered approach evokes child drawings. Her work deals with a sort of hyper vibrant world, depicting moments, casual snapshots from everyday life encapsulated in colour. Cenedese’s big drawings, as she describes them, are intimate stories of the daily life. Some of her artworks can be read as contemporary still-life paintings which translate her particular language of sketchy-looking representations. She arranges disparate objects in rooms and ambiguous spaces, playing with varying proportions and awkward perspective, by creating a sort of domestic landscape.

With her recent series of interiors, “Room”, she explores the themes of intimacy and memory of a space. The presence of the occupant is felt, through the objects left in a room.