Hjelm’s practice explores the hidden parts of the self—the uncomfortable and the unspoken. Through a visceral visual language and the rawness of exposed materials, the work reflects on internal constructs by way of the external world. Just as emotions like lust or grief, when acknowledged, can reveal deep desire or unmet needs, the undulating surfaces mirror the complexity of transformation—where the repressed begins to take form, offering the possibility of becoming whole.

 

The work exists in a state of tension—both expansive and collapsing—where structures seem to rise and fold inward simultaneously. This unstable equilibrium reflects the psychological process of confronting what lies beneath the surface: identities in flux, boundaries dissolving, forms unraveling and reassembling. The use of both paint and digital print on linen reinforces this duality. Layers of physical mark-making are interwoven with printed imagery, collapsing distinctions between the handmade and the technologically mediated. The linen, a traditionally organic surface, becomes a site of collision—between material and immaterial, body and screen, presence and trace.