Helayna Lagos
BA (Hons) Illustration with Animation
hi, I’m helayna.
I am socially engaged artist, illustrator and storyteller, who creates fun, imperfect and satirical creations based on the world around me and from this, the consequent construction of new visual worlds.
Working with museums, libraries and archives and leading workshops, I use a mixture of analogue and digital techniques, such as drawing, printmaking (especially etching), film and virtual space, to create rich and immersive visual stories. I enjoy including subtle, partially hidden messages into my work, that encourage social commentary through humour and deconstruction of social conventions.
My most recent project ‘The Mad House’ has been a process of taking what I have learnt working on external projects and applying it inwards.
‘The Mad House’ is made up of 3 hand drawn 360 panorama rooms (which can be viewed in VR headsets): ‘the hallway’, ‘the kitchen’ and ‘the garden’ centred around family and identity, how they are intrinsically linked and learning how to unpick that narrative in a healthy way.
It is a disassembling of domestic spaces which can hold memories of comfort, pain, laughter, fear and a reconstruction a new one on your own terms. The work is a dedication to prioritise self, have conversations about familial roles, childhood, gender and sexuality in a safe space and overall take a step forward in forging an identity on my own.
The immersive rooms can be seen here: https://kuula.co/share/collection/7qbjH
