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Helen Anna Flanagan

video, performance, installatie, film, Experimenteel, Audiovisueel

Using observed human incidents as the foundation of my work, I blend real events and experiences into fictional narratives across video, installation, performance, and writing. Through imagined scenarios—often incorporating elements of the absurd—I explore social structures and the political subtext of the everyday, focusing on affect, emotions, labor, and the body.

Burnt Toast
Burnt Toast, video installation, FACT Liverpool
The Gap, video installation, Ballon Rouge Gallery, Brussels
The Gap, video installation, Ballon Rouge Gallery, Brussels
Deeply, Madly, Ballon Rouge gallery, Brussels
Deeply, Madly, Ballon Rouge gallery, Brussels
Deeply, Madly video installation, CENTRALE for contemporary art, Brussels
Deeply Madly, installation, CENTRALE for contemporary art, Brussels
Deeply Madly, installation, CENTRALE for contemporary art, Brussels
Blood Sisters, WIELS, Brussels
Blood Sisters, WIELS, Brussels
Gestures of Matter, IKOB Museum of Contemporary art
Gestures of Matter, IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgium
Gesticulating Wildly... IKOB Museum, Belgium
Gesticulating Wildly... IKOB Museum, Belgium
Gesticulating Wildly... IKOB Museum, Belgium
Gesticulating Wildly... IKOB Museum, Belgium
Gestures of Anatomy (2019), HD video, 2'10 excerpt (original 14'00)
Gestures of Anatomy, HD video, 2'10 excerpt (original 14'00)
Gestures of Collapse (2019), HD video, 3'15 excerpt (original 12'00)
Gestures of Collapse, HD video, 3'15 excerpt (original 12'00)
Sunday, HD video, 3'40 excerpt (original 16'05) - Sunday is a short fictional film that thinks about the medium of radio and how it was formerly used in the twentieth century as a technique to encourage productive labor in factories. The radio and beat of the music helped control the workforce on the assembly line, creating a constant upbeat tempo to produce. Using this notion of the radio as a controlling, motivating and affective soundtrack for efficiency, the work experiments with how radio could be reimagined under certain contemporary conditions. It involves the figure of the radio agony aunt, a disembodied voice that offers anonymous callers advice. A lady, known as Sandra, calls up talking about how numbers, rhythmic machines and voices are slowly taking over her fatigued body and obsessive mind, working much like the beat of an infectious song.
Swamps & Ponds, HD video, 3'00 excerpt (original 18'00) - The film is loosely based on the speculative origins of a community of peasants known as the Toxicophagi. The Toxicophagi built up resistance to the poison arsenic, by regularly consuming it. This poison was used as a symbolic starting point to explore the power of invisible substances or structures and the tolerance of an overlooked collective. By repurposing this compound, the film explores the implications and 'invisible' toxic forces have on an environment and those who inhabit it, looking further at hierarchies, power, subcultures and intoxication. Kindly supported by CBK Rotterdam and Styria-Artist-in-Residence-Stipendien.
The Dynamists, HD video, 3,00 excerpt (original 11,00) - The Dynamists is a video involving Angelo Perrotti, a Belgium musician and poet from the eighties, and twelve local teenagers. Inspired by Perrotti's vocals in the underground band The System, the video emphasizes the broken voice, using disruption as a recurring motif. The broken voice refers to transitions between different vocal registers, a phase associated mainly with puberty and adolescence. In this video language breaks down, multiple voices rupture or shift in tone, and various frequencies disrupt the sequencing of images. Alluding to the coming-of-age genre, with its 'rites of passage', the video attempts to capture the transitional instability of adolescence and proposes disruption and conflict as an essential part to growth.
Friday, 2'40 excerpt (original 18'00) - The work Friday considers the limitations of language to share lived experiences with others. To communicate and connect with one another, beyond language, we use alternative systems: one of these is the construction of shared experiences through games. In Friday, the setting of a nightclub provides the stage for two actresses to merge speech and other vocalizations with gestures and moves connected to activities of play, following a partly scripted, partly improvised, scenario.

International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2026

Datum:
Locatie: Lantaren Venster
https://iffr.com/nl/

Solo exhibition, Burnt Toast

Datum:
Locatie: FACT
https://www.fact.co.uk

A Room with a View

Datum:
Locatie: Ballon Rouge

Solo exhibition.

https://www.ballonrougecollective.com/helen-anna-flanagan-2023

The Feast

Datum:
Locatie: Gallery Miroslav Kraljevic

Solo exhibition curated by Barbara Gregov.

https://g-mk.hr/en/

Deeply, Madly

Datum:
Locatie: CENTRALE | lab

Solo exhibition curated by Tania Nasielksi

https://centrale.brussels/expos/helen-anna-flanagan-deeply-madly/

Playground Festival 2021

Datum:
Locatie: Museum M

Performance festival curated by Eva Wittocx

https://archive.playgroundfestival.be/2021/nl/index.html

Emergency Biennial

Datum:
Locatie: Aspex Gallery

Group exhibition with Vera Hadzhiyska, Eugene Macki, Adriane Morard, Rhys Morgan, Rossella Nisio, Jim Roseveare and Jessica Wetherly

https://aspex.org.uk/exhibition/emergency-2021/

Gesticulating... Wildly

Datum:
Locatie: IKOB Museum for Contemporary Art

Solo exhibition and publication, curated by Frank-Thorsten Moll and Brenda Guesnet

https://ikob.be

Regenerate

Datum:
Locatie: WIELS

Group exhibition curated by Zoe Gray and Helena Kritis

https://www.wiels.org/fr/exhibitions/entry-487671

H Y P E R M A R K E T

Datum:
Locatie: Kunsthal Gent

Group exhibition curated by In De Ruimte, Ghent

https://kunsthal.gent/en

New Songs for Old Cities

Datum:
Locatie: Netwerk Aalst

Group exhibition curated by Daniella Géo, Piet Mertens and Pieternel Vermoortel

https://netwerkaalst.be/nl/new-songs-for-old-cities

Sharjah Film Platform 3

Datum:
Locatie: The Flying Saucer
In samenwerking met: Sharjah Art Foundation

Film festival featuring over 60 short and feature-length films, a public program of talks and workshops, the SFP Industry Hub and awards.

http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/events/sharjah-film-platform-3

Resisting the Trouble – Moving Images in Times of Crisis

Datum:
Locatie: Manifattura Tabacchi
In samenwerking met: Lo schermo dell'arte, VISIO-European Programme on Artists’ Moving Images, NAM – Not A Museum

Artist residency and group exhibition curated by Leonardo Bigazzi

http://www.schermodellarte.org/en/visio-2020/

The Kebab Helix

Datum:
Locatie: NRW forum
In samenwerking met: IMAI - The Inter Media Art Institute

Group exhibition curated by Linnea Semmerling. With Dara Birnbaum, the video collective Gorilla Tapes and Petr Vrana.

https://www.nrw-forum.de/ausstellungen/the-kebab-helix

Feminism and Other Sums

Datum:
Locatie: Sala El Aguila
In samenwerking met: Proyector Festival Video Art Platform

Group exhibition with Marina Abramovic, Shirin Neshat, Helen Anna Flanagan, Ana Esteve Reig and Núria Güell.

https://proyector.info

Enter Through The Void, Exit Through The Gift Shop

Datum:
Locatie: CAMPO Victoria
In samenwerking met: Kunsthal Gent

Arts festival, exhibition and screening: Isabel Burr Raty, Ines Claus, Katinka de Jonge, Liesje De Laet, Sofia Caesar, Helen A Flanagan, KIRAC, Natasha Rijkhoff, Ghita Skali, Yonas Seyoum, Amanda van Hesteren, Lara Verheijden

https://kunsthal.gent/en/events/enter-through-the-void-exit-through-the-gift-shop

Prix Médiatine 2020

Datum:
Locatie: La Mediatine
In samenwerking met: Wolubilis

Group exhibition and art prize.

https://www.wolubilis.be/prix-mediatine/

Zonder kunstenaars geen kunst

Datum:
Locatie: MHKA
In samenwerking met: NICC

Group exhibition and live performance

https://antwerpart.be/agenda/zonder-kunstenaars-geen-kunst

Flowing Dynamics

Datum:
Locatie: Plagiarama Gallery

Duo exhibition with Sybille Deligne curated by Yuna Mathieu-Chovet

http://plagiarama.com/flowing-dynamics/

#feministartprize

Datum:
Locatie: IKOB - Museum of Contemporary Art

Group exhibition and art prize. Curated by Frank-Thorsten Moll, including Julia Lübbecke, Andrea Radermacher-Mennicken, Benjamin Ramírez Pérez, Megan Leigh Heilig and Vanja Smiljanić.

https://www.ikob.be/en/exhibitions/ikob-kunstpreis-fuer-feministische-kunst

Remote Complicities

Datum:
Locatie: Salonul de Proiecte

Group exhibition curated by Alice Gancevici and Remus Pușcariu. Including artists Laurent-David Garnier, Informal Strategies - Doris Denekamp and Geert van Mil, Yazan Khalili, Kristin Wenzel, Alice Gancevici and Remus Pușcariu

https://salonuldeproiecte.ro/exhibitions/Remote-Complicities/

Fragile State

Datum:
Locatie: Museum of Odessa Modern Art,
In samenwerking met: British Council, IZOLYATSIA Foundation

Group exhibition curated by Ilya Zabolotnyi and Lina Romanuka. Including artists Anna Kakhiani, Nikolay Karabinovych, Victoria Myronyuk, Dana Venezia, Helen Flanagan, Jaimini Patel, Martim Ramos, Riccardo Matlakas, Susannah Stark

http://msio.com.ua/en/component/content/article/558-fragile-state-the-closing-exhibition-of-the-swap-ukukraine-2018-artistic-residences-in-odesa

Poetry International

Datum:
Locatie: V2_ Lab For The Unstable Media
In samenwerking met: 49th Poetry International Festival

Solo presentation

https://v2.nl/events/poetry-international-v2_/view
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