Hélia Aluai - visual artist

Jan 26
4 min read

Hélia Aluai, between thread, memory, and the transparency of the world

Born on the island of Sal, in Cape Verde, then a Portuguese colony, Hélia grew up in Portugal, in Espinho, near Porto. Between the rigor of a military father and the gentleness of a self-taught painter mother, her childhood flowed to the rhythm of tides and colors. Drawing became her refuge early on. Line, form, and stroke became her secret language. She traces, she tells, she repairs through her hand what words cannot say.

Trained at the Fine Arts School of Porto, she studied painting, graphic design, then sculpture, before pursuing a master's degree in architecture. This crossing of disciplines built an attentive eye for the structures of the world, for the balance between matter and void. In Switzerland, where she settled a few years ago, she had to rebuild everything: a network, a language, a space of existence. In this host land, she now teaches drawing and illustration at the Canvas school in Lausanne and Renens. The exchange with young people, she says, nourishes her: "They are curious, enthusiastic, and remind me what it's like to thirst for understanding."

But behind this daily life as a teacher unfolds an artistic universe of great depth. There, Hélia weaves, literally, the threads of her memory. Fabric has become her essential medium: a material both fragile and resistant, a space of projection and transparency. She chooses it light, almost immaterial, so that the work can integrate into its environment without ever invading it. Each work, each sewn surface is a self-portrait. The suspended threads become roots, symbols of an experienced uprooting and a new rooting in the making. These threads, often red, recall passion and the bond of the heart. They descend into space like extensions of oneself, seeking their place in the world; a reminder of the work of Chiharu Shiota (*1972), a Japanese artist known for her immersive red thread installations.

Hélia inherited an old sewing machine from her mother: an intimate and initiatory tool that connects generations and stitches memory to the present. The fabric she uses often comes from the family home's curtains. These are fragments of her past, pieces of life that she reactivates through creation. Crochet, which she also practices, evokes for her the spider's web: domestic protection, symbol of the mother. Like Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), whose sensitivity she shares, Hélia weaves to remember, to rebuild herself. Thread becomes a dialogue, a way to "speak with herself."

Stone also intervenes in her work: she wraps it in fabric, suspends it from a thread, gives it new breath. These stones, sometimes real, sometimes fashioned in styrofoam to lighten their weight, recall the density of memory. Stone becomes a symbol of anchoring, of persistence, while fabric embodies passage and lightness. Through this contrast, Hélia questions the relationship between what weighs and what takes flight, between the visible and the invisible.

Her practice of drawing and illustration completes this research. Often done in India ink or on digital tablet, her female figures recall young girls with soft and melancholic faces inhabited by Portuguese saudade: that luminous nostalgia, that longing we cherish. They embody the little girl she was, oscillating between dream and absence, between here and elsewhere. These characters, simple in appearance, carry a universal emotion. Old masters such as Rembrandt, black and white, Victorian and Gothic art, Japanese drawing, prints, Franco-Belgian comics, as well as burin engraving and India ink drawing are influences on her work. All this cradled by literature, music, and dance that rhythm her working hours. Thus, drawing becomes a practice, a discipline, she says.

Her recent work extends to narrative illustration and object creation: fabric dolls, felt and acrylic, circus characters, mythical and hybrid figures. Hélia rediscovers there the magic of tales and the theatricality of popular imagination. Each drawing, each object becomes memory: the memory of a people, of a house, of a cycle.

This notion of the living house, recurring in her work, embodies the place of all returns: the childhood home, the abandoned home, the home we carry within us. Materials—fabrics, threads, papers, fragments—become sensitive archives. She sometimes speaks of false memory, of reconstructed memories, of mental images we convince ourselves we've lived. This slippage between true and invented nourishes her relationship to collective memory and identity.

Curious to understand the mechanisms of thought, Hélia now collaborates with scientists at CHUV, exploring how the brain preserves and transforms memories. This encounter between art and science naturally fits into her research: seeing how memory is woven, how it unravels, how it invents itself. She is also interested in ancient engraving, notably memento mori and tarot cards that she designs through engraving, from which she retains the discreet mysticism and reflection on death.

In her universe, everything connects: life, loss, memory, transmission. Thread is both link and fracture, scar and attachment. Her works, suspended between earth and sky, tell the story of a woman's attempt to remain anchored while staying free.

A member of the Aperti and ArtyShow committees, as well as an artist member of Visarte, Hélia continues to enrich the Swiss art scene with her singular vision. Her work, deeply introspective yet open to the world, speaks to us of what endures: memory, roots, trace. She reminds us that art can, like the thread hanging from the maternal machine, connect times and mend absences.

Dr. Marie Bagi

Director of the Musée Artistes Femmes (MAF)

Published November 4, 2025

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