Helena Ospina Lizarralde is an interdisciplinary artist and writer
(b. Colombia).
Working across relational projects, installations, sculpture, writing, and the publication of artist books, she often begins with a question and constructs a situation around it. Questions appear in public space, generate conversations and archives, inhabit objects and publications, or become environments that invite participation. Through these gestures, questioning becomes both a method and a material.
Her work explores the matrix of official language and objects, displacing them from their original functions to operate as metaphors. Moving between research and poetic gestures, she often adopts the language and appearance of existing systems, using irony and subtle shifts in meaning to make their structures visible.
At the core of her practice is an interest in the relationship between human existence and the systems we construct to organize and understand it. Her work examines how time, labour, productivity, movement, and the anticipation of the future become structured, measured, and performed, and how the individual comes to inhabit these structures through often unnoticed gestures and choreographies. Within this tension, she questions how these systems assign value, regulate behaviour, and shape our relationship to what remains difficult to organise or quantify: uncertainty, subjectivity, and existential questions.
CV
Helena Ospina Lizarralde
b. Cartagena, Colombia
Education
2026 MA Contemporary Art Practice. Royal College of Art. London.
2022 UDK Universität der Künste Berlin, guest student. (Prof. Kristina Leko)
2020 European Graduate School, seminars The Obscene Masters. (Prof. Slavoj Žižek)
Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
2018 BA in Fine Arts, Universidad de los Andes. Bogotá, Colombia.
Selected exhibitions
2026
Battersea exhibition. Royal College of Art. London, UK
2024
(SOLO) One stitch per second, VORFLUTER Gallery. Berlin, Germany.
Concreto sobre agua, Casa Lü. Mexico City, Mexico.
2023
ARCOT. Tokyo, Japan
Berlin Art Week Monopol, Berlin
2022
This is not a love song/ Räume für aktivierung, Galerie M. Berlin, Germany.
48 Stunden Neukölln. Berlin, Germany.
Art Spring Berlin, Kino Colosseum. Berlin, Germany.
2021
End of Nations, Monopol Berlin. Berlin, Germany.
GlogauAIR residency final exhibition. Berlin, Germany.
ARTBO (Bogotá International Art Fair) , Artecámara. Antes de que todo sea polvo,
curated by Emiliano Valdés. Bogotá, Colombia.
Publications
2026 (The Elephant. book) Essay; Its the summer of 2020 and im in Žižek's kitchen. UK.
2025 (artist book) Do hands hold or are they held?. UK.
2025 (Nature and Wonder. DNA Magazine) Essay; Caminar con la luz apagada . Mexico.
2023 (artist book) Do you paint or do you draw?. Germany.
2021 (catalogue) GlogauAIR. Germany.
Lectures and Talks
2026
Reading Performance. Ivy house. London, UK.
Lecture for BA Fine Arts, University of Salford. Manchester, UK.
Workshop. Kettles Yard. Cambridge, UK.
2024 Artist talk, One stitch per Second exhibition. VORFLUTER. Berlin, Germany.
2022 Artist talk, Warum sind wir hier Projekt. Projktraum Galerie M. Berlin, Germany.
Recognitions / Residencies / Grants
2024 Residency at Casa Lü. Mexico City, Mexico.
2022 Selected mentee 2022, Artist Pilots Project (Mentor; Sonya Schönberger). Berlin, Germany.
2021 Residency at GlogauAIR. Berlin, Germany.
Collections
UAL Chelsea College of Art Collection. London, UK.