Jamil Hellu

Knight Foundation Gallery Finalist
       
Cart #5, Records (Brown)
 

 

 

Artist’s Website

jamilhellu.net

 

Artist’s Statement

Shopping Carts
During the spring of 2014, I was one of the Bay Area artists participating in the residence program at Recology San Francisco, having the unique opportunity to scavenge discarded materials from the Public Disposal Center of the city of San Francisco. I had full access to gather items that would otherwise go to a landfill or a recycling facility. From an array of construction materials, furniture, household appliances, paint, gardening tools, to broken machines, musical instruments, unused merchandize, clothes, food, plants, personal objects and photographs, the amount of “things” coming to the facility everyday is overwhelming. This series of shopping carts directly refers to a range of ideas related to production, consumption, recycle and waste, symbolic of consumerism and the economic system we live in.

 

 

About the Artist

Born in Brazil, Jamil Hellu earned his MFA in art practice from Stanford University in 2010 and was granted a BFA degree in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003.
Hellu was selected for the 2014 Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco. He has received the Graduate Fellowship Award at Headlands Center for the Arts for 2010-2011. He held a six-month residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2008 and was also granted the Markowski-Leach Scholarship for 2008-2009. His work has been included in the 2012 book “Identities Now: Contemporary Portrait Photography,” published by Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art.
He has taught photography at Stanford University, San Francisco Art Institute, Diablo Valley College, and UC Berkeley Art Studio.
He lives in San Francisco.