I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, sculpture, collage, and social engagement. Through a hybrid of mediums, I tell overlooked stories of intersectional identities. As a research based artist, my work is informed by written and oral archives, dialogical art, and somatic practices. My work interrogates complex histories of institutionalized and systemic oppression, and asks how it informs our personal experiences and interpersonal relationships.
I often use my own body as a medium in my practice, as well as the bodies of participants or collaborators in my community. I am interested in how documentation and relics preserve live art in the absence of the artist, expanding the lifespan of the work beyond ephemeral moments and becoming art unto themselves. As an Ethiopian-American, my work draws upon traditional African art sensibilities, where visual art and ritual often intersect, and art objects are infused with an experience or aesthetic that can layer their meaning.
The subject of my interdisciplinary projects have ranged from critiquing the bias in art historical cannons that perpetuate myths of Western male exceptionalism; advocating for the overlooked labor of BIPOC women activists; redefining notions of citizenship as it relates to forced (im)migration; and more. In our trying political climate, where Black lives are continuing to fight to matter, and women are courageously calling for autonomy over our own bodies, my work seeks to reconcile with the complex contradictions of what it means to be an American.
BIO:
Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, sculpture, video, performance, and social engagement. Her work incorporates archival research, embodied practices, and dialogical studies, supporting overlooked narratives of intersectional identities.
Metaferia’s solo exhibitions include Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2024-2025); RISD Art Museum, Providence, RI (2022-2023); and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2021-2022). Her work was included in the 2023 Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates. Group exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2025); Blaffer Museum of Art, Houston, TX (2024); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2023); The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD (2023); and Modern Art Museum Gebre Kristos Desta Art Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2019). Her work is in institutional collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY.
Metaferia received her MFA from Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She’s held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Recess Art, Project for Empty Space, and Silver Art Residency. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine, Artnet, Artforum, and ArtNews. Metaferia is an Assistant Professor at Brown University in the Department of Visual Art, and lives and works in New York City.