Jessica Helfand | Artist Biography

I am an artist and writer with a practice grounded in social history ↖01 and artificial intelligence: using a combination of archival research ↖02, AI, and the imaginative work of artistic practice ↖03, I reimagine the people, places, and periods in history that are often inaccessible to us.

Bridging classical techniques with contemporary methods, I make paintings that look old but are, in fact, new ↖04.

Constructing faces from composite sequences of recovered images, and considering everything from age and hair ↖05 to gesture, posture, and circumstance ↖06, I paint on top of photographs—effacing, enhancing—and ultimately letting go of the source material when what’s in front of me begins to resemble a painting ↖07.

What follows next are multiple, successive rounds of sketches using generative AI: here, I experiment with different word combinations to chisel away at what’s in my mind, until I find what (or, more to the point, who) I’m looking for ↖08.

“I paint what I want to see,” Philip Guston once wrote ↖09.

I paint who I want to know. And I am increasingly of the opinion that artificial intelligence can be inflected with subtlety and nuance, pointing us to evocative, emotional, even intimate ways of connecting to our own humanity ↖10.

Working within an extremely controlled set of formal criteria, and using a methodology that merges technology, photography, language, and paint, I am interested in making portraits that are additive ↖11 and complicated and human—like people are.

Image captions

Vote Poster

Featuring a photograph of British activist and suffragette, Lady Florence Priscilla Norman (1883-1964) riding on her scooter on her way to vote, 1916.

The Service Society

A selection of some of the ephemera and research used in conjunction with The Service Society.↗

Face: Book Trailer

Short excerpt from Face: A Visual Odyssey, video directed by Lake Buckley and dayday.

Fanny Price

From the series Character Studies.
Mansfield Park (1814) by Jane Austen.
20 x 16 inches
Archival pigment and oil on canvas
2025

The Phantom of Ourselves

From the series Old News.
40 x 60 inches (each) 
Oil on canvas 
2017

Beebe’s Bathysphere

Excerpt from a short film produced in conjunction with The Ezra Winter Project ↗, showing the American naturalist William Beebe (1887-1962) descending in his bathysphere to study marine life.

Emma Bovary

From the series Character Studies.
Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert.
20 x 16 inches
Archival pigment and oil on canvas
2024

The Little Boys

Short video showing a selection of facial sketches of young boys, studies from The Service Society.↗

Philip Guston at Work in his Studio

Excerpt from a short film produced by SFMoMA.

Twice Bitten

From the series Old News.
40 x 60 inches
Oil on canvas
2017

Doppelganger 01

From the series Kaleidoscopic Portraits.
20 x 16 inches
Archival pigment and oil on canvas
2022

Born 1960 Philadelphia, PA
Lives and works in Providence, RI

Residencies + Fellowships

Artist in Residence
California Institute of Technology
Winter, 2020

Fellow
Bogliasco Foundation
Fall, 2019

Director’s Guest
Civitella Ranieri
Summer, 2018

Artist in Residence
Yale Institute for Network Science
2014-2016

Henry Wolf Residency
American Academy in Rome
Spring, 2010

Published Work: Books

Self-Reliance
London: Thames&Hudson, 2021

Face: A Visual Odyssey
MIT Press, 2019

Culture is Not Always Popular (Co-Author)
Fifteen Years of Design Observer
MIT Press, 2018

Design: The Invention of Desire
Yale University Press, 2016

The Ezra Winter Project
Observer Editions, 2012

Scrapbooks: An American History
Yale University Press, 2008

Reinventing the Wheel
Princeton Architectural Press, 2002

Screen: Essays on Graphic Design,
New Media and Visual Culture
Princeton Architectural Press, 2001

Paul Rand: American Modernist
William Drenttel Editions, 1998

Six Essays on Design and New Media
William Drenttel Editions, 1997

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Selected Exhibitions

Jessica Helfand : New Work
‍INK Miami
ArtBasel Miami
December 2024

Jessica Helfand : The Service Society
Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York
Spring 2024

Faces + Figures
Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York
Winter 2024

Face Value
Cooper Hewitt Museum + London Design Biennale (Medalist)
Fall 2019

Jessica Helfand : Other Cultures
New Paintings TDC | NY
Winter 2017

The Moleskine Project
Salone dei Mobili, Milan
Spring 2009

Thoughts on Democracy
The Wolfsonian
Miami, Florida
December 2008

Jessica Helfand : New Projects
Third Slovenian Biennial
Llubljana, Slovenia
Fall 2007

Volvelles: The Magnificent Art of Circular Charting
The Grolier Club, NY
Spring 2004