Born in the 'Heart of Africa', Malawi, Lilongwe, (1997) with family roots from volcanic Madeira island, Netherlands and Germany, and growing up in the coastal city of Spain, Valencia, Blankenstein consider herself a citizen of the world, a mycelium network that transcends national borders and cultural ideas, a migratory bird that knows and inhabits many landscapes.
As a graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Valencia, Master in Ecological Humanities, Sustainability, and Ecosocial Transition from the University of Madrid, and Master in Cultural Management, Blankenstein has developed a passion for cultural ecology, political ecology, ecological art, participatory art, heritage immaterial, curating environmental art, ecofeminism, ecological ethics, Gaia theory, permaculture, ecological economics, holistic cosmology, and environmental education.
Blankenstein is especially interested in analysing how cultural sociology, ecomuseology and environmental aesthetics can be tools to stimulate the international ecosocial transition and sustainable development. She hopes to promote cultural regeneration using the tools of art and creativity to face the current global crisis and build a resilient future. Art is an ideal instrument to move towards sustainability because, through truth, philosophy and beauty, creation can unlock people's hearts and profoundly change through direct experiential and emotional work.
Currently, Blankenstein is investigating the role of ecological aesthetics for eco-social transition at a PhD level with the department of Art and Environment in the UPV. She is also co-creating a permaculture garden and off-grid home with my family where she grow organic food and make natural cosmetics. In addition, through her participation in the research group led by José Albelda, she has participated in several landscape painting projects in the Spanish ecovillage Carrícola and has acquired experience as a volunteer with Asociación Culturarte, Ecologistas en Acción and Por Ti Mujer, international development cooperation.
About Helena
Art has become a pivotal point in her life to the extent that Blankenstein manage to translate her emotions into images through her creative practices — that is to say, to find the images which are concealed in the emotions.
Her artistic process flowers from synchronicities that illustrate the always present but unseen guidance that supports her to expression through creation. She takes her artwork as a journey to understand her gifts, acknowledge their reality, and live them into the world through acts of life-enhancing service.
Through art Blankenstein is pursuing her inner images and this is becoming the most important discovery in her life — in them everything essential is decided.
Nature and Art
Through her work as an artist Blankenstein feels a wonderful intensity and promise to be true to her intentions in accordance with the reciprocity of communication with the natural world. In this very moment, artistic creation is making her fall in love in a way and to a depth she could never have imagined possible. Blankenstein is allowing herself to shape-shift with these lighting bolts in the horizon.
In June 2022, Blankenstein abandoned her previous identity through the parting with her adolescent home. She currently find myself in a semi-wild land on the periphery of a national park called La Sierra Calderona. Her attention is now dedicated to the land and the creation and nurturing of a garden where art and nature through garden design can reach a magical expression. As previously mention, Blankenstein is developing a new way to experience the world through falling in love. Falling in love with nature, now seeing herself reflected in the quality of the landscapes, animals, birds and flowers that most move her. This raw and unfiltered relationship with the land is informing Blankenstein to want to live as someone guided by love, who loves generously and receives love graciously.
With the establishment of her home, now coherent with her life philosophy of degrowth and communion with Mother Earth and its miraculous rhythms, more and more what she see surfacing from her unconsciousness is a longing not to seek healing but rather to be torn open so that she may remember who she really am. She is seeing the treasures hidden in the dark that are ready to shine.
Blankenstein's spiritual desires enriched by this sacred space of material creation is gifting her the space to allow her inner muse to guide her to the underworld universe and uncover shining layers of increased perception in the layers of reality.
These flow experiences is a place where all of her senses become heightened and acutely alive to her surroundings. Her sensate body begins to tingle, and she feel unbroken connections with the energies of the great weather, the migrating flocks, the deep warmth of the Mediterranean. These experiences awakened Blankenstein to the profound beauty of the web of life.