Patrice Aphrodite Helmar is an artist who was born in Juneau, Alaska. They worked in their father’s small-town camera shop and darkroom growing up and they continue to work in photography. Helmar’s work has been shown at the Jewish Museum, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, Gaa Gallery, the National Museum of Iceland, and other spaces. Helmar’s multidisciplinary work concerns issues of labor, class, queerness, and the politics of representation. Helmar’s photography is engaged in the poetics of lived experience and everyday life.
Helmar received an MAT from the University of Southeast Alaska in 2013, an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University in 2015, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2022.
Helmar is a Lecturer on Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University and Columbia University’s Visual Arts MFA program. Helmar lives and works in Juneau, Alaska, and New York, NY.