Structured improvisation and textile thinking guide my practice in sculpture and installation. My work speaks to a trembling present, drawing on histories of transcultural migration and (mis)translations of linguistic and material systems. As a descendant of Latvian refugees and Californian farmers, with professional experience in support and infrastructure industries, I am drawn to emergent narratives at the intersection of personal and collective identities.
I transform Latvian cultural artifacts and practices — such as dainas (poetry), vernacular tools, and architectural features — through shifts in scale, material, and juxtaposition, integrating symbols from the Latvian diaspora with contemporary imagery from historically and presently contested regions in Latvia and North America. Materially expansive, my practice spans handweaving, assemblage, metal fabrication, lens-based media, and ephemera to build hybrid objects and affective environments. Subtle and immersive, my work engages sensory phenomena — water, air, sound, scent, and organic matter — inviting close observation, interaction, and reflection.
Recent projects focus on producing material performances that complicate conventional interpretations of natural sciences, mechanical systems, embodied knowledge, and material agency. Informed by phenomenology, agential realism, theories of listening, and the interplay between human and more-than-human worlds, these works offer nuanced reflections on perception, plural subjectivities, and hidden processes that shape perception.
ARTIST BIO
Helen Liene Dreifelds (b. Toronto, Canada) works in sculpture and installation driven by questions of transformation through the lens of affect, language, and duration.
Her work has been featured at Idea Exchange, Cambridge Art Galleries, Harbourfront Centre, Lonsdale Gallery, MOCA Toronto, and Propeller Centre for Visual Arts. Past residencies include ISSP Riga (2022) and Harbourfront Centre (2014-2018). Support for her practice has come from grants through the Toronto Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Holding a BA in Applied Human Sciences, with a major in Community Development and a minor in Art History
from Concordia University (2009), as well as a DEC in Constructed Textiles from Montreal Centre for
Contemporary Textiles (2014), she is currently an MFA candidate in Sculpture at the Yale School of Art.