Balarama Heller lives and works in New York City. His practice reimagines archetypal symbols found in the natural world. He explores primal symbols and patterns, both real and imagined, working towards a visual language of preverbal awareness. These symbols interact in a ceaseless cycle of creation and destruction, referencing the cosmological, mythological, and atomic scales.
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Balarama Heller b.1979, New York
NYC-based artist Balarama Heller has created a language of photography that unites the spontaneous with the thoughtfully composed. The resulting images are impactful visual narratives that are both intimate and universal. His studies in mythology, nature, transcendence, ritual, and consciousness inform his visual approach. Primordial forms and colors evoke the process of origination and decay, both on the physical plane and the imagined one.
Balarama Heller received his BFA from the Art Institute of Boston. He worked at Magnum Photos NY before joining the U.S. Merchant Marines where he crewed ocean-going tugboats. Thereafter, Heller lived in Istanbul, photographing long-form projects concerning ritual and transcendence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Heller resettled in New York City in 2010.
Recent group shows include Smoking at The Bunker Art Space West Palm Beach, Maelstrom, at 303 Gallery, New York, You Can't Win, Jack Black's America curated by Randy Kennedy at Fortnight Institute, New York, What's Outside the Window at ReadingRoom, Melbourne AU, Agnes B, New York, New Artists at Red Hook Labs and the 2015 Aperture Summer Open. In 2014, he published his first artist book, Into and Through. Zero at the Bone received 1st place for the 2017 Center Awards Editor’s Choice and runner-up for the 2017 Aperture Portfolio Prize. His 2019 project, Sacred Place was published in Aperture Magazine and is a forthcoming book, with text by Pico Iyer. His work is regularly featured in The New York Times, T Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and other publications. Heller’s work is in the collections of several museums including the Bunker Art Space in West Palm Beach and the Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma.
EDUCATION
2001 BFA from the Art Institute of Boston
EXHIBITIONS
2025 Illuminations, Origins + Ends Holograms, Yale CCAM
2024 Spectral Stepping, Snow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2024 Skeletal Hand on the Glass Harmonica, Snow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2024 Vapours of Delphi, Snow Gallery, NYC
2022 Bunker Art Space, West Palm Beach, Smoking
2021 Aperture Foundation / Untitled Art Fair Miami
2021 Webber Gallery, London
2020 303 Gallery, Maelstrom, NYC
2020 ReadingRoom, What’s Outside the Window? Melbourne, AU
2020 Agnes B, Group Exhibition NYC - Paris - Tokyo
2019 Fortnight Institute, You Can’t Win, Jack Black’s America Curated by Randy Kennedy, NYC
2018 CENTER International Winners Exhibition, Zero at the Bone, Santa Fe, NM
2017 Red Hook Labs New Artists, Zero at the Bone, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Foundry Art Centre, Zero at the Bone, St. Charles, MO
2015 Aperture Summer Open, Sparrow Mountain, Aperture Gallery NYC
2008 New York Photo Festival, NYC
2006 Sommerloch, HfG + ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany- The Invisible Hinge
2005 Vice Magazine Photo Annual Show, New York, Sweden, Japan, Australia
AWARDS
2017 Aperture Portfolio Prize Finalist Zero at the Bone
2017 CENTER 1st Place Editor’s Choice Award Zero at the Bone
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