Helena Janečić

Helena Janečić (Osijek, 1979) is a contemporary Croatian painter and comic artist working between Osijek and Zagreb. She graduated in painting from Furman University in the USA (2003) and in 2007 completed her master's degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. In her practice she combines large-format painting, comic drawing, and occasional performative formats, with a particular focus on queer everyday life, the relationship between identity and cultural heritage, and the themes of 'invisible' or neglected queer history in local communities. Her paintings often build figurative scenes and intimate narratives, yet direct them toward a broader social reading: the body, the gaze, and interpersonal relationships become sites of negotiation over visibility, belonging, and self-definition. A notable part of her oeuvre consists of cycles that reinterpret traditional motifs and rural imaginaries, 'rewriting' them from the perspective of contemporary identities, thereby opening space for a new understanding of both personal and collective memory. In her solo exhibition 'It's All Coming Back To Me Now' (Lauba, 2022), she focused on representations of queer and lesbian identities on social media, presenting women as active agents in visual narratives of confidence and self-awareness.