In the shifting interplay between shadow and illumination, Berlin-based artist Helen Hines emerges as a luminous voice—one attuned to the raw, embodied rhythms of the world. Known for her boundary-dissolving practice that moves seamlessly between film, performance, and the poetics of presence, Hines invites viewers to witness art as a porous, living act. Her project Threads, featured in the exhibition Chasing Shadows, Finding Light at HAZEGALLERY, explores the tender rituals of grief and memory, weaving material and gesture into intimate encounters with loss. In this interview, Hines shares the roots of her practice, the power of collaborative creation, and the quiet, radical act of listening—to the body, to the land, to the threads that connect us all.
From Yale’s lecture halls on existential risk to Berlin’s queer performance underground—Can you tell us a bit more about your artistic background and how you first became interested in art?
In high school, I was quietly taught that art was a waste of time—so I focused on languages instead: German, French, Russian. When I got to Yale, I was certain my path would be geopolitical. I wanted to uncover the dirty truths of the world. I gravitated toward environmental law, then finally landed in existential philosophy—asking: What does it mean to live at a time of certain existential risk?
I took a few art classes at Yale as electives outside of my main focus of study. One semester I studied the color blue. Then, by some fluke, I landed a seat in a very competitive senior-year watercolor seminar. My professors were incredible and deeply generous. I quickly realized that I didn’t have the technical drawing skills of the other students, so I had to find my own way. I started working with yupo paper, experimenting with chemicals, sand, smoke, bubbles. My dorm room floor became a chemistry lab. I loved being swallowed by the improvisational process of abstract painting—texture, color, sensation. It was a world beyond reason.
After graduating, I ended up in the corporate world—first at Mercedes-Benz, then at a fast-growing medical marijuana company. The hours were brutal. The money was great. It didn’t take long for me to crash and burn. Hard. I fled to Southeast Asia with a backpack and landed on an island in Thailand during COVID.
That’s where everything cracked open.
The nomadic art residencies I found there gave me the permission I didn’t know I needed. Months of contact improvisation, physical theatre, and poetry in the jungle busted a pipe in me. The poetry that had been sitting dormant for over twenty years came pouring out. The esoteric neo-tantric experiences stripped me to my essence—and let it shine.
At one point, I took over an abandoned concrete shell of an unfinished building my landlord had been using as storage. He handed me a key and a pair of hedge clippers and said, “If it opens, and if you can clean it, it’s yours.” No one had been inside in 20 years. That space became my first atelier. There were no windows or doors, so the jungle was always crawling in. And instead of keeping it out, I invited it in—to be part of the storm. Part of the color. Part of the chaos.
That was the beginning.
You’ve lived in spaces as diverse as Russia, Thailand, and now Berlin. How did these geographies shape your artistic language?
Living in such diverse places instilled in me an insatiable curiosity. When you’re continuously exposed to new things, you instinctively learn to see the world with the eyes of a child—always asking questions, seeking connection, wanting to understand people through their stories, their movements, their everyday rituals. Part of that nomadism came from a desire to escape—an alienation from the U.S., from the machinery of capitalism, and a longing to find somewhere else to belong. Somewhere slower, softer, more sensuous.
Each place taught me something different. Thailand and Koh Phangan introduced me to embodiment, ritual, rhythm, trance. Russia exposed me to a very different emotional landscape—dense, raw, layered with ancestral grief and poetic resilience. And Berlin has been a place of contradiction: both freedom and fragmentation, high art and subcultural wildness, a stage where all my identities can collide.
Traversing these geographies taught me that I am a guest everywhere. Taught me how to move through the world without extracting what doesn’t belong to me. How to smell the flowers without picking them. That awareness is foundational my artistic language: it’s about listening, about asking, How can I be shaped by these places/artworks/beings without trying to shape them in my image? Always reminding myself that there is so much that I don’t know.
My language is built through collaboration and investigation. Many of my most important works—certainly the ones I consider most meaningful—have been collaborative. I’ve always been more interested in making space for multiplicity rather than striving for mastery. Different bodies, genders, cultures, and worldviews enter the room, and what we create together reflects that. The process is intimate, awkward, messy, tender—full of raw humanity. That’s what I value most.
A recent project in Japan centered on this very question: how to create without colonizing. How to engage with a place and its people in a way that is reciprocal, respectful, and still artistically honest. These are ongoing questions, of course—but they form the backbone of my practice.
More than anything, I want my work to participate in the cultural fabric of our collective dreaming. Not to define it. Just to be a thread in the weave.
Your alias, Kėkė Søl, sounds almost mythic. Was it born out of reinvention, protection, or play—and when did you begin to fully inhabit that persona?
The truth is much less glamorous than it sounds. The name “Kiki” first came from the dance and performance company I was working with in Thailand—it just stuck. Not long after I moved to Berlin, I was sitting on the floor of my apartment with a producer friend, getting ready to release my first track on Spotify. I realized I needed a name.
I started playing around with letters and symbols from different languages—things that had interesting shapes or sounds—and eventually landed on “Kėkė Søl.” I liked how it looked and how it rolled off the tongue. Then, just for fun, I ran it through Google Translate using ‘detect language.’ The result? “Cake mess.” And I thought—yes. That’s perfect.
Kėkė Søl gave me permission to experiement, radically. To be whoever I wanted to be at any given moment, no matter how messy or chaotic or queer. To step into my red latex go-go boots and strap-on purple cock, tape a mustache to my face and Xs on my tits, and scream and dance and shake the earth under my feet. Under that name, I did all kinds of wild, experimental performances and released over two-hundred tracks on SoundCloud. Along the way, I discovered that so many aspects of the mask that I was trying on were actually true parts of me. I finally gave permission for my queerness, and it felt so good to finally let all of that breathe and sing.
I still use Kėkė Søl as my music and performance alias, but last year, after my mother passed away, something shifted. Her name was Phyllis Hines—an Olympic and World Champion cyclist, my role model, and my best friend. Losing her cracked something open in me. Time slowed down, stopped, stuttered. My whole artistic practice changed. There’s a wound that I couldn’t and maybe will never be able to patch. It just bleeds. I’ve learned to love it and love what it teaches me.
I spent much of the year immersed in grief rituals—grief for death, for women, for the earth, for lost love, for war. That process taught me how to let go, how to be quiet, how to create from stillness. I’m also learning how to compassionately re-connect with my roots. The ones I always ran away from. And so, I took my mother’s name as my own. Last week, I printed it on the window of my studio in Berlin: Helen Hines.
Can you describe a performance or experience where the audience became your collaborator without realizing it?
There are many moments where the boundary between performer and witness has dissolved, but two come to mind—almost as opposites, yet deeply connected.
One was part of my experience with the Art Continuum Nomadic Residency project, founded by Sasha Dodo and Dolores Dewhurst-Marks. The performances were intimate encounters—often with no formal audience at all. A group of us would sit in silent meditation in an empty room, no instructions, no introductions. Just presence. What unfolded was less a performance and more a shared state of being—a merging of bodies, breath, space. The so-called ‘audience’ became collaborators in stillness. In that quiet sensitivity, something subtle and sacred emerged. The architecture of performance dissolved, and what remained was a harmonious, reciprocal organism. One time I turned to Dolores and whispered, “What is this?” and embodied poetry unfolded under a soft spotlight on the concrete floor before us. She turned to me and whispered back, “A prayer.”
On the other end of the spectrum, I once had an orgasm in front of 50 people. It was part of a workshop exploring pleasure, agency, and vulnerability. There was no pretense or theatricality—just an honest, embodied release in the presence of others. What I remember most is the feeling of being deeply held by the room. Some faces were shocked, others soft. But the energy was unmistakably mutual. Their attention wasn’t invasive—it was supportive, reverent even. In that moment, I felt powerful, exposed, and utterly connected. We were exchanging something wordless and profound.
For me, these kinds of experiences point to the essence of what performance can be—a porous space where we’re allowed to feel, question, remember. Where we don’t just observe, but participate in what it means to be alive. Where we dissolve into the fascia that binds everything—reaching and stretching into the mysterious unknowable fabric.
Your work is deeply embodied. How do you prepare your body before it becomes a medium—do you have rituals, thresholds, or states you seek to access?
The preparation comes from years of exploring the body through Contact Improvisation, somatics, yoga, breathwork, and various forms of meditation. These methods are all about sensitizing the body to the world—turning it into an electric sponge. The body becomes porous, aware, attuned. It listens.
Of all these, durational work has been the most mind-altering for me. When you surrender to time—not just let go of it, but dissolve into it—you start to access another kind of reality. It’s not about performance in the traditional sense anymore. It’s about presence, endurance, trust.
I’ve never been interested in pushing my body toward danger just for the sake of spectacle or experience full-stop. Running around naked in Berlin was edgy enough—and I did receive some frightening reactions, particularly from men unprepared for that level of provocation. But I did one piece inspired by Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0, reimagined through the lens of pleasure instead of pain. In her autobiography Walk Through Walls, she writes, “The audience will kill you.” She put a gun and a bullet on the table. I put objects of delight.
The relationship between the artist and the world is shaped by the artist’s vision of that world—by the dream they’re holding. And with that comes responsibility. Ethical, spiritual, political. I’ve stepped into grey areas in my own practice. I’ve wrestled with the problematics of certain gestures, the implications of certain acts. But it’s all part of the process—of finding a path toward something meaningful.
In a world that’s becoming increasingly disembodied—through technology, speed, disconnection—I see embodiment as a radical act. Deep listening, to the body and to the world, is central to how I make art, how I move through life. It’s how I stay human. And if my work can extend that hand to others, to remind them of their own aliveness, their own inner movement, then I feel I’ve done something worthwhile.
What did working with Olafur Eliasson teach you?
There are so many ways to answer that—through the lens of being an employee at Studio Olafur Eliasson, as a creative collaborator, and as someone who shared a deep, intense, and intimate connection with the man.
Working at the studio gave me a window into the fine art industry and a very specific kind of success. The space functions like a hive, buzzing with charmingly intellectual beings who work with precision and purpose to produce massive artworks. I worked directly under Olafur’s right-hand man, which gave me a bird’s-eye view of the studio’s inner workings—its departments, hierarchies, PR strategies, production timelines. In many ways, it felt more like working for Mercedes-Benz than an artist: the structure was corporate, efficient, and very, very polished.
Olafur lives literally and metaphorically at the top—his penthouse perched above the studio in an old industrial building in Berlin. Building yourself into an institution like that brings incredible power. But it also comes with sacrifices. In my view, that kind of vertical structure feels outdated. It’s not what we need from artists right now—in a world that’s crying out for collective re-imagining, for dismantling capitalism brick by brick. Or maybe with a sledgehammer. We need horizonatal systems, not vertical ones.
At the heart of our connection was a shared passion for perception—how we encounter the world through the senses, and how those encounters shape our inner and outer realities. Olafur has a deep reverence for light, space, and elemental forces, and I’ve always been drawn to the body, sensation, and the raw material of experience. In many ways, our conversations were less about finished artworks and more about how to feel the world more fully—how to listen with the skin, how to see with the breath. We were both obsessed, in our own ways, with embodiment—not as a concept, but as a lived, ongoing practice. I think that’s where we truly met: not just in art, but in our relentless curiosity for what it means to be here, now, in a body, in a world that is constantly shifting.
At the same time, we both come from vastly differing worlds and have contrasting perspectives and philosophies of artistic practice. He used to joke that he was like a giant ship and I was a jet ski—zipping around, trying everything, landing occasionally on his deck to exchange ideas from wildly different orbits.
I was exploring so much freedom during those years—freedom to be in my body, to play, to create, to love wildly and publicly, to pour buckets of paint on my floor and stand barefoot in rivers of bubblegum pink just because it felt good between my toes. He was fascinated by that. By my polyamory, by my queerness, by how my creativity was fueled by the electric heat between my thighs more than the carbon-stamped logic of my thoughts. I think he was thrilled to live vicariously through the chaos and sensuality I embodied.
I could’ve spent those years absorbing his techniques and the ephemeral magic that makes his work so enigmatic. But instead, what he offered me was something even more precious: full permission to be myself. To go all-in as Kėkė Søl. To be wild, undisciplined, intuitive, raw. He put me on a pedestal—and from that place, I found the courage to step into my own practice, my own language, my own life.
Now that you're in the Sound Studies program at UdK, how do you imagine your practice evolving in the next 3 years? Will film remain central—or is there a new medium calling you?
The theory and ethics of listening are really at the core of my studies right now. I’m interested in how we listen not just with our ears, but with our skin, our bones, our memories. It’s changing how I move through the world—and how I make art.
Film is definitely still central, and I imagine it will remain a core part of my practice for a long time. I love the collaboration it demands. I love the exhibitionism the lens invites—the strange dance of vulnerability and control. I’m constantly asking: how can I give my attention with care? How can I build non-extractive relationships with my collaborators, with the camera itself? How can image-making be an act of reciprocity, not domination? And even more, how can it open the possibility for an empowering process of transformation with the act of giving and receiving attention?
But honestly, I don’t know exactly where things will go. Right now, I’m building a giant kinetic mobile—a hanging structure made of sticks, stones, bones, volcanic rocks, broken shells, glass fragments. It functions almost like a set of chimes. When you touch it, it touches back. Everything moves. Everything sounds. Everything is connected.
I’m also in the final stages of editing a novel—it’s part-smut, part-poetry, part-dreamscape. A weave of memory and fantasy. Hopefully it’ll be ready for publishing next year.
Yesterday, I sat on my living room floor for several hours scanning old books from my great-grandfather and recipes and letters and crinkled notes and cotton balls that I’ve been rubbing my thoughts into while I meditate.
I think the magic—and the curse—of being an artist is that the ‘work’ never stops. The ideas keep coming. The mediums keep shifting. Curiosity never sleeps. So while I’ll always return to the camera, I’m also following the threads that lead me to sound, sculpture, text, and sensation. I don’t want to be fixed in one form. I want to remain in motion.
What are your future plans or upcoming projects, and where do you see your work heading in the next few years?
Right now, I’m working on a few books—including the aforementioned novel along with some artbooks about past and upcoming film/performance projects. Plus some feminist bootlegs. I recently received my first film laurels, which was a beautiful affirmation, and I have a couple of gallery exhibitions lined up for next year that I’m really excited about.
Looking ahead, I hope my work continues to move in the direction of eco-somatics—exploring the relationship between body and earth, listening as a form of ecological attunement, continuing to find ways to create with rather than on top of the world around me.
And somehow, no matter where I go, the erotic keeps calling me back. It pulses through everything I do—not always overtly, but as a kind of undercurrent, a reminder of aliveness, of longing, of the body’s intelligence. I think my future work will continue to live in that tension: between the sensual and the spiritual, the elemental and the intimate.
Helen Hines website
Helen on Instagram