Helen Wilson Roe

A life-size bronze statue of Henrietta Lacks, a Black American woman whose cells were the first ever to survive and multiply outside the body and whose use changed the course of modern medicine, has been unveiled at the University of Bristol by members of her family to honour the 70th anniversary of her cells first being used.

Her son Lawrence Lacks, who was 17 when his mother passed away, was joined by her grandson Alan Wilks and his wife Pam, granddaughter Jeri Lacks-Whye and great-granddaughters Victoria Baptiste and Veronica Robinson for the unveiling on Monday 4 October 2021.

The statue, commissioned by the University earlier in 2021, is located in the heart of the campus precinct next to Royal Fort House. It is the work of Bristol artist Helen Wilson-Roe and is the first public statue of a Black woman made by a Black woman permanently installed in the UK.

It follows two of Helen's portraits of Henrietta Lacks and Cllr Cleo Lake, Bristol's first Black female Lord Mayor, which have been on display in the Wills Memorial Building since October 2020.

HeLa cells are used in almost every major hospital and science-based University in the world, including the University of Bristol, where they have been used most recently for COVID-19 research.

The University is also announcing the launch of The Henrietta Lacks Studentship – a six-week paid summer internship for an undergraduate student to work in its laboratories on cell biology – and, with the support of the Lacks Family, is planning free in-person visits to the University for KS4 and KS5 pupils to learn more about cell biology. Other education science events in collaboration with the Lacks family in the UK and overseas are underway.

Jeri Lacks-Whye, Henrietta Lacks' Granddaughter, said: "As the world commemorates 70 years since Henrietta Lacks' HeLa cells changed the world, we also reflect on my grandmother's untimely passing. It is only fitting that she is memorialised to educate future generations on her legacy and the importance of advancing health equity and social justice for all. The Lacks Family is honoured to begin our worldwide tour with the University of Bristol and Helen Wilson Roe for the unveiling of this historic statue."

Helen Wilson-Roe said: "Henrietta's statue will be the first public statue of a Black woman made by a Black woman in the UK and will be installed permanently on the University of Bristol campus. May our ancestors continue to show us the way to walk.

"As a child growing up in Bristol, there were no statues of Black women that I could identify with. So, knowing that my children and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to see Henrietta's statue is just fantastic, especially at this time when Bristol is starting to address its past.

"I have been researching Henrietta Lacks independently for over 20 years. My mission now 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."

Professor Jeremy Tavare, Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Bristol, a biochemist, added: "Many of our biomedical science researchers whose work uses human cells have used Henrietta's cells in their research or with collaborators, including myself. So we all owe Henrietta an enormous debt of gratitude.

"I am delighted to host this beautiful statue of Henrietta on our campus so we can visually honour her contribution to important discoveries we have made in Bristol over the last 70 years. I feel intensely proud that her family have been so supportive in our doing so. Her statue will do so much to raise her profile with our students and children in our local communities."

Professor Judith Squires, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, said: "Henrietta Lacks' legacy to science research and health care globally cannot be underestimated. This statue celebrates the impact her cells have made on our research here in Bristol and research around the world.

"The Lacks family has a unique relationship with Helen Wilson-Roe, a local artist who wished for her statue to be in Bristol. So we are pleased to be able to give it a permanent home right here on our campus.

"The statue also marks a significant step in addressing the lack of representation of women, and women of colour, in public artwork in our diverse, multicultural city. As public art, the local community are most welcome to visit to see this wonderful statue for themselves and learn more about Henrietta Lacks and her legacy."

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. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951 at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Just before her death, a sample of her cancerous cells was taken and developed into the first immortal human cell line to be used in medical research. Known as HeLa, this cell line has since been involved in many scientific advances, including the development of the first polio vaccine by Jonas Salk.

Henrietta, an impoverished African-American woman from Clover, Virginia, unknowingly donated her cancerous tissue for research purposes. While pharmaceutical companies have profited from their use of HeLa, the Lacks family have struggled with access to basic healthcare and remained unaware of Henrietta’s contribution for some twenty years after her death.

Helen has been interested in and researching this story for over 26 years. In 2010 Helen met and began collaborating with the Lacks family 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 grandchildren. By 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 Bristol cell biologists.

We learn of HeLa’s wide applications in medical research, for example testing the toxicity of chemicals, understanding viral infections, genetics, IVF, cancer treatments and the aforementioned polio vaccine.

The exhibition and 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 is donating all the oil portraits to the Lacks family. If you are interested in using an image from ‘A Brush With Immortality Henrietta Lacks’ series of paintings, please contact Helen Wilson Roe.

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

Making Sense: A Rwandan Story is a collaborative project and exhibition, inspired by a visit the artist Helen Wilson-Roe made to Rwanda in 2002. At its heart are twelve large-scale paintings, which together tell a powerful and moving story of personal dignity, courage and survival. Helen Wilson has been painting images of Rwanda since the 1994 genocide, which claimed the lives of over a million people in 100 days. Having now met survivors and visited the genocide sites, she has produced new works that show both the beauty of Rwanda and the resilience of its people in the face of a massive human tragedy.

"Trying to make sense of what happened in Rwanda has been at the heart of my work for nearly a decade. I want to express through this project as much as possible about Rwanda as it is today - the beauty and the tragedy, and the dignity and grace of its people in the aftermath of the genocide. I am not a politician or a journalist, but I can paint. That's my communication tool. I want to represent what I saw clearly and accurately, to offer understanding and hope for the future"
Helen Wilson-Roe

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda claimed the lives of over a million people in 100 days. Nearly ten years on the human truths behind the horror are still being revealed. A desire to learn more about what happened in Rwanda led artist Helen Wilson to travel there in 2002 to meet survivors and to visit genocide sites. Her visit has inspired a series of new paintings, which together tell a powerful and moving story of human courage and survival, capturing both the beauty of Rwanda and the resilience of its people in the face of a massive human tragedy.

Fergal Keane, the distinguished news correspondent and writer who has reported on and written extensively about Rwanda over the last decade, introduces the catalogue.

The exhibition is accompanied by a documentary film about the artist's work on this project produced by award-winning cameraman Mike Fox and BBC director Kate Broome, who have previously made television programmers together in Rwanda.

Preface by Fergal Keane – from Making Sense: A Rwandan Story

I am writing this introduction in the small Tanzanian town of Arusha. I am preparing to give evidence in the genocide trial of a Rwandan Mayor who led the slaughter of local Tutsis in the area of Rusomo.

I wish that I could bring Helen Wilson's paintings into court with me. I and other colleagues have tried to convey some of the reality of the genocide, but I am aware that we can only succeed in a very limited way. The televised imagery of massacre replayed and replayed can have an alienating effect on those watching: they can only watch for so long without being repelled by the inhumanity of the spectacle played out before them. The televised image can too easily become a series of fragments without context. In the mounds of reeking corpses we struggle to recognisehumanity. 

After the genocide I told my close friends that I felt my own work had only touched the surface of the thing, that the human truths at the heart of the horror might only be revealed decades later The journalist can give you the political and social context, the historian can tell you where different movements came from, the economist can tell you about the collapsing economy and how created a desperate need to find scapegoats. But the human factor, as I told my friends, was something, which the philosophers, poets, novelists and artists would have to wrestle with. To gaze into such darkness as Helen Wilson has done takes a courage, which most artists will never be called on to display. Helen had a choice. She might have easily chosen and easier’ subject - there are many after all. Instead she responded to her own sense of duty as a human being, and she did so with a sacred weapon - the paintbrush. 

The result is a quite extraordinary series of paintings. Andre Malraux said that the true artist always gives something of themselves to their work; in fact he used the phrase "grafts something of themselves " Helen has done this through her gift for empathy with those who suffered, whether they are the women of Avega ("Woman and Child" and "Four Avega Women") or the anonymous dead of church compounds ("The Bone Shed"). In her painting "The River" Helen transported me back to a late spring evening by the banks of the Akagera River on the border with Tanzania. Then I watched the terrible, bloated corpses washed down over Résumé Falls. Helen's painting is based on a story told to her by a survivor, Andrew, who would watch for the bodies of friends and family being washed past. I do not recognise the bodies in the painting as those of the bloated figures I saw. I am thankful for that. Helen Wilson has managed to return to these lost people the dignity taken away by genocide. They are recognisable as people, not simply the "biological plastecine" to which Adolf Hitler once referred.

Her aesthetic sensibility is acute and she is a truly gifted artist. But the greatest gift she brings to these paintings is humanity. I have looked at so many images from Rwanda that I truly believed I would see nothing that could surprise me. Nor did I expect to see images, which would offer some hope amid the terrible despair wrought by genocide. Helen Wilson says that she wants to offer hope and understanding in her paintings. She achieves this more completely than she knows. Take your time in front of these works. Be still. They should inspire us all to be humble and to remember the beauty of the lives taken away. Helen Wilson has achieved a considerable artistic feat. It is also an act of love.

Helen undertakes painting commissions in oils.