“My name is Helen Brechlin and I am a rising senior at Massachusetts College of Art and Design studying both Painting and Art History.
My painting centers on continuing the fight to raise awareness of violence against women and breaking stigmas of rape survivors. My goal as an artist and woman is to start a discourse and to further educate about the ignored topic of sexual assault. It is not until we start talking about and acknowledging these events that we can even begin to address the larger issues at hand.
Recently I have been painting hair. Hair has always been important to me. Like many girls growing up, it has been the crux of my femininity - a safety blanket for my own identity. Hair grows with you as a personal recording of your history. What happens when those memories are frightful, terrifying, or violent? If hair is a recording of your past and your past includes terrible incidents how will the hair manifest itself? What is the reaction when hair, an entity revered when attached to a head, is removed from the traditional setting of the body? Through my paintings I explore these questions and the allegorical nature of hair specifically in relation to sexual assault.”