Helen Wilson Roe

Helen Wilson-Roe is a gifted Black artist from Bristol. Her art practice explores Racism-Exploitation-Genocide-Bristol and the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans. Helen is a sculptor, painter, installation maker and documentary film Maker.

 Helen’s statue of Henrietta Lacks was erected at University of Bristol in 2021. This is the first life-size bronze public statue of a Black woman made by a Black woman in the UK. 

Helen addresses social and cultural issues that are particular concerns to disenfranchised and culturally diverse communities whose voices and stories are rarely told in mainstream art spaces, though they have universal significance.

Helen felt that she had a calling to visit Rwanda. She arrived there in 2002 and met survivors, and visited massacre sites. The Rwandan people told Helen their stories, and she felt a huge responsibility to paint their stories accurately and sensitively. Helen spent ten years researching the 1994 genocide and a year completing the thirteen paintings. Helen was the first artist to exhibit a large-scale body of work based on the aftermath of the Rwandan 1994 genocide. The paintings were exhibited at Bristol Museum Art Gallery and Birmingham Museum. She gifted the paintings to the Rwandan Embassy in London.

A Brush with Immortality - Henrietta Lacks

This exhibition centres on and showcases an exemplary art-science collaboration. It features the screening of Helen’s documentary A Brush with Immortality which narrates the story of Henrietta Lacks, her family and her posthumous contribution to medical science.

While pharmaceutical companies have profited from using HeLa cells, the Lacks family have struggled with access to basic healthcare and remained unaware of Henrietta’s contribution for twenty years after her death.

Helen has been interested in and researching this story for over 26 years. She began researching Henrietta Lacks in 1997 when she read an article in The Sunday Times Magazine and also through watching a BBC documentary, “The Way of All Flesh” by renowned British director Adam Curtis.

In 2010 Helen met 24 members of the Lacks family. She began collaborating with them to make visible the image of a woman who unknowingly had an incredible impact on medical history. Helen’s mission is to bring this story to public attention through a series of vibrant portraits of Henrietta, her children and her grandchildren.

In doing so, she aims to highlight the injustices they have suffered over the decades following the exploitation of HeLa cells by the medical community.

The film portrays Helen’s interviews with Lacks family members and interweaves scientific perspectives into the HeLa story through interviews with cell biologists from University of Bristol.

The exhibition and 60-minute documentary provide edifying and inspiring insights into the history of Henrietta Lacks, the plight of the Lacks family, the impact of HeLa cells on medical science, how science and art can work together to enhance public understanding of research and the minefield of ethical concerns surrounding human tissue donation and anonymity.

Helen was commissioned to make an installation based on her trip to America after meeting with the Lacks family. This was exhibited at the Science Museum in London. The commission only covered the cost of the installation.

In 2018 Helen went on to exhibit 6 glass panel installations based on Henrietta Lacks, her cells and her family at the Arnolfini, Bristol.

Helen’s mission is to finish painting all 24 portraits of the Lacks family and gift the portraits to the family so that they retain full control of their legacy.

Helen recently painted a portrait of Cleo Lake, the first Black female Mayor of Bristol 2018-2019. Cleo Lake replaced a portrait of Lord Nugent with Helen’s portrait of Henrietta Lacks. This was displayed in the Lord Mayor’s chamber, City Hall, Bristol. Lord Nugent was associated with the Bristol slave trade.

Helen was proud to be named in the Awards list “19 Black women who have made a difference” in 2019 and 2020. Black Bristolians Pack/Bristol one Curriculum-have also featured Helen’s art as part of their school curriculum.