BIOGRAPHY
Helena Detsch is a freelance visual artist and environmentalist. She is based in Germany and also works in Finland and Austria. In 2022/23, she completed her degree in Visual Arts/Painting and Cultural Studies at Art University Linz (AT). In 2019, she spent an Erasmus semester in animation at Turku Art Academy (FI), and in 2025/26 she spent seven months at various artist residencies in Finland.
Helena works primarily with oil painting, installation and moving image. In her artistic practice, she explores the (mis-)relationships between humans and more-than-human life. She engages with ecofeminist and posthumanist perspectives that challenge Western-influenced anthropocentric narratives of nature as a mere resource, focusing instead on the complex interconnections between human and more-than-human agents. Through series of paintings and immersive spatial installations at the intersection of art, science and activism, she creates spaces for reflection on coexistence, sustainability and socio-ecological change. To develop a more sustainable artistic practice, she also researches how to craft natural colours from plant and soil pigments.
PROJECT TITLE
After Animal Industry
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
I currently plan to develop an utopian art project on the animal industry in Germany, centered in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, home to Tönnies’ headquarters.
I have recently connected with GgdT (Gemeinsam gegen die Tierindustrie), an activist alliance launching a process that brings people and initiatives in the region into dialogue about positive futures. In collaboration with GgdT, I want to explore what a region might look like beyond industrial animal production and translate this collective imagining of “after” into an artistic format that makes alternative futures visible to a wider audience. What happens to landscapes, labour, communities, identities and relationships between humans and other animals when an industry that has shaped a place for decades is questioned or transformed?
The project is at an early research stage. It could take form of a spatial installation combining painting, moving image, found or collected materials and potentially participatory elements, bringing different perspectives into relation rather than illustrating a predefined position.
What remains unresolved is how to create a multi-layered artwork that does justice to this complex inquiry without simplifying the realities of the region or speaking for the people who live there. As GgdT’s fieldwork is only beginning, this is an opportunity to develop the artistic methodology, conceptual framework and form alongside the research, rather than illustrating it afterwards.