POETICS OF CHILDHOOD

The series Poetics of Childhood by Helena Tahir unfolds as a dense and immersive reflection on memory, imagination, and the fragile space between past and present.

Developed in 2020, the works are primarily large-scale linocuts, some reaching up to two meters, printed by hand onto felt, a material that gives the images a soft, almost velvety surface and a distinctive blurred depth. This unusual technique is not only a response to technical limitations, but a deliberate artistic decision that emphasizes process, touch, and the physical act of making.

Visually, the prints are saturated with figures, objects, and fragments. They are often children, interiors, and found imagery, woven into complex, collage-like compositions. Rather than depicting childhood as a fixed or nostalgic image, Tahir constructs it as a layered and unstable field of associations. Motifs drawn from magazines, books, and personal references merge into fictional constellations, where memory appears fragmented, reassembled, and continuously shifting.

Despite their often dark and densely packed surfaces, these works are driven by a subtle interplay of light and shadow. What initially feels opaque gradually opens up: small details emerge, connections unfold, and hidden narratives begin to surface. This tension between concealment and revelation mirrors the workings of memory itself, partial, selective, and shaped over time.

At the heart of Poetics of Childhood lies Tahir’s precise and labor-intensive approach. Each line is carved, each form carefully constructed, resulting in images that demand slow and attentive viewing. The works resist immediate readability; instead, they invite the viewer into a process of searching, be it through visual noise, through layered meaning, through the echoes of remembered and imagined worlds.

In this way, Poetics of Childhood is less about childhood as a theme than as a condition: a space where images, emotions, and stories remain fluid, unresolved, and open to interpretation.

At the core of Tahir’s practice lies an extraordinary dedication to process. Her large-scale linocuts and meticulous drawings are the result of intense physical labor and precise draftsmanship. Often working without a press, printing by hand using a spoon, she transforms technical limitations into artistic strategy. The material itself becomes an active collaborator: carved, tested, and reworked through techniques such as frottage, each matrix evolving into both tool and autonomous artwork.

Tahir’s compositions are dense and immersive, filled edge to edge with figures, objects, and fragments drawn from found imagery: old magazines, books, and personal archives. These elements merge into fictional, almost dreamlike constellations that oscillate between clarity and ambiguity. While her works may appear dark and saturated at first glance, they are in fact charged with subtle luminosity, where even the smallest detail can shift perception and meaning.

Alongside her printmaking, her colored pencil drawings hold a deeply personal dimension. Often reflecting on her upbringing in Jesenice, they depict urban and industrial landscapes through intimate, interior viewpoints like windows framing a world shaped by memory and nostalgia. In more recent works, figural motifs enter new cultural contexts, forming an evolving, hybrid iconography through which Tahir reflects on belonging and cultural inheritance.

In an age saturated with images, Helena Tahir’s work resists immediacy. It asks us to slow down, to look closer, and to engage with complexity. Her prints and drawings unfold as visual essays, fragmentary, timeless, and richly layered, where meaning is never fixed, but continuously negotiated between image, material, and viewer.