Open Call / The Shed / 2024

Hélène’s Portfolio


Thank you for getting this far. I have prepared this page to better explain what’s behind my proposal and to demonstrate my capabilities to fulfill the project.

Migrant Dreams

To me a photograph is a gift of permanence, where the ephemeral stages of life get forever captured. I used to shoot everything around me, emulating my heroes at National Geographic, but eventually realized that the only images I came back to, were those that reflected the passing of time, specially mine. Childhood; aging; happiness; birth; death. I wanted to save my life for eternity. I wanted to exist.

I migrated from Venezuela many years ago, driven away by the collapse of our institutions. Like every migrant, I left everything behind: my family, my friends, my home, who I was and who I was going to be. While at the time, I was filled with the excitement of reinvention, I was too young to understand what I was giving up.

Despite not speaking English and barely knowing anyone, I did well in New York. I made friends, found great jobs, fell in love. However, in my attempt to integrate –and after experiencing a significant degree of discrimination-, I censored my LatinAmerican side. I stopped talking about my home. I held back from laughing and hugging the people around me. I avoided speaking up, for fear of being devalued for my accent. Eventually, and after Americanizing myself to the maximum, I got to believe I had become better than my fellow Venezuelans. I lost who I was, while I never became.

And then, my father died. An existential shark bit a chunk of me so large that my entire self crumbled. I tried to fill this emptiness with other versions of him, like his photos, his drawings, his books. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, my love for my country reemerged. I craved color, mountains and the song of birds. I discovered the beauty of our noise and disorder. I gave myself to the embrace of strangers. Through the search for my father I found my way back home.

As I lay on my bed after an exhausting day, I close my eyes and travel. My body remembers what everything feels like. My fingers untangling his hair. My arms surrounding his huge belly. My hand holding his hand. And I also fly above the Avila Mountain where his ashes rest. I hear the roar of the Angel’s falls. I slide down the Coro sand dunes under the sun. And as I fall asleep, they merge, showing landscapes of love, dreaming of home. The dreams of a migrant.

The Concept

Through a projection piece, I will juxtapose the layers that define my sense of home. By combining images, videos and immersive soundscapes, I will embrace the places and people I have lost.

The work explores a few of the many layers of grief experienced by immigrants. We differ in origins, languages or beliefs, but we all suffer similar types of loss and are often voiceless and alone. I hope to create a universal message that speaks to us, immigrants, through the artistic articulation of our shared sorrows. 


Realizing this project will finally give me an individual voice. I will no longer be defined, shaped or censored by a job, by my profession or by our American concept of correctness. This is the first step in a path of reconquering my identity as a Latin woman. 


My goal is to use my own experience as a Venezuelan migrant to capture the beauty of my land and create parallels between (drone-based) landscape footage and close up portraits of my people. I will travel to Venezuela to capture the assets. Local talent will assist me. I possess all the skills necessary to complete this project from concept to production and I intend to spend the given resources on production costs.

  • My father .

  • My mother in the mist of her Alzheimer.

  • Feeling alone and overwhelmed by the forces of life.

  • The inevitability of decay.

  • His beard.

  • His hands.

  • Bigger than life.

  • Reemerge.

Skills to execute the proposed concept.

I have dedicated most of my career to storytelling. My specialty has been video, photography, animated features and new media displayed through emergent technologies. I have never published any materials as an independent artist, but I have extensively practiced the craft of visual narrative.

I have spent the last five years working on the design and stories of artificial intelligence. Before that, I spent a decade at the American Museum of Natural History telling visual stories about science. My provided sample work (also shown below) belongs to my museum career, and it is focused not only on storytelling, but on their spatial exhibition in architectural spaces.

My father taught me photography when I was 13 years old and I started with his first camera, a 6x6 Franka from 1948 . Since then, I have acquired a taste for diverse imaging technologies, including DSLRs, GoPro and, relevant to my proposal, drone cameras.

The following is a selection of images of both people and places demonstrating my style and skill with visual composition. In the coming weeks I will add additional drone materials.

Visual Storytelling Work

  • A tryptic projection juxtaposes images of earth disasters at different scales, exploring the contrast between their beauty as planetary distance versus the horrors it creates at human scale.

  • An overhead video projection of ocean waves recorded with a drone creates the illusion of water.

  • A large and circular coffee table, surrounded by lounge chairs showcases projections of real brain imagery. Four subjects, amongst them YoYo Ma, are studied through brain technology to understand how their brain processes their special talents.

  • By turning the pages of this extra large book, potion recipes magically appear. The pages activate magical animations with ancient illustrations telling stories of poison throughout history. Three different technologies were combined to create the illusions in his, the first object of its kind.

  • A 20’ interactive multiuser projection surface invites visitors to explore anatomical information through layering of animated features.

  • A multiuser map overlays twenty layers of historical maps. This fantastic device was created before multitouch surfaces existed, so it was not only innovating from a storytelling perspective, but technologically as well.

  • A multiuser video game takes visitors through the challenge of terraforming mars.

  • A computer vision setting empowers visitors’ arms to fly through a prehistoric land inhabited by pterosaurs. A VR version was also implemented.

Photographing People

Photographing Places