Six decades into a life shaped by hardship and resilience, Hélène N. began to draw women’s faces, and did not stop for a decade
From a small, wheeled shopping trolley, a smiling septuagenarian pulls out sheets of paper, nearly a hundred tightly framed portraits of women. A small crowd begins to gather as she lays her drawings out on the ground. The largest are roughly A4 in size; others defy measurement, their edges irregular, cut and re-cut. In the anonymity of a town square alive with constant movement, the woman offers her works for a few symbolic euros.
Hélène N. – she does not divulge her real name – was born to Sicilian-French parents in 1947 in Algeria, when it was a French colony, in Philippeville, a city whose name changed with history. By the time she was 13, the political context had led her parents to move her and her four siblings to France, to Massy-Palaiseau, a suburb south-west of Paris.
77 of Hélène N.’s drawings on show at Librairie Sans Titre in Paris, 2026; photo: Estelle Hanania
By LAURE FERNANDEZ
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision 127.
