Helina Yohanes is an Eritrean-Ethiopian multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin, Germany. As an architecture student, dancer, DJ, photographer and model, Helina explores all forms of expression on her journey to find her own style. We met on the set of my documentary schwarz (black) in which she is one of the protagonists. A mutual friend had asked her to tag along. From the moment she entered our garden, she illuminated the space with her warm energy and genuine smile. After sharing her experiences of growing up as the child of African immigrants and living through the Black Lives Matter moment as a Black artist in Germany, she sat down with the crew and talked about her love for dance and music. Helina is the kind of creative that leaves a trace everywhere she goes. Born and raised by Eritrean-Ethiopian parents, Helina identifies as Black, not as Afro-German. “To be honest, no-one has ever associated me with Germanness”, she says in schwarz. Growing up in Bavaria, Southern Germany, she spent her teenage years fully emerged in the local dance scene, travelling around the country and competing in battles. Since moving to the capital a year ago, she has quickly become known as a model, DJ, and all-round creative to look out for. Helina is one of haram’s reappearing faces and has been turning heads and decks all over. Germany might not claim her, but Berlin sure does.
In 2018, Helina visited her brother on his semester abroad in Brazil. The day before New Year’s, he decided to give her a quick intro to DJing. “He said: ‘We’re having a party tomorrow, here’s how it works, you’ll play a set’”, she laughs. Upon discovering her talent, she decided to continue, but struggled with accessing the equipment. On her determination to continue, she says, “I wanted to keep practising and play the artists that I never get to hear at parties. In my opinion, most DJ sets are too monotone, there’s no space for diversity.” In her practice, Helina fuses the 70s with Soul, Afrobeats, Reggae, and House. As a dancer, she has a special relationship with hip hop, rap and trap,“I don’t give myself limits, I play what I like, not what people want to hear.” Lucky for us, she has found equipment in Berlin and is ready to bless the capital’s dance floors.
"Women artists are rarely featured in rap and trap DJ sets, and Helina believes that they deserve more space"
LIT(TLE) TITS is the first set of a series, which serves to “highlight[] female voices [and] our autonomy over our bodies and lives.” Helina created it to honour the diversity and different personalities within the female rap and trap scene, which according to her, “is big, but not taken seriously.” Women artists are rarely featured in rap and trap DJ sets, and Helina believes that they deserve more space, “Female music seems to be its own category which is mostly played by girls and members of the LGBTQ community.” She wants to help change that and open up spaces that break clichés of what it means to be a woman that raps.
When asked about her favourites, Helina grins and says “Azealia Banks. I know she’s problematic, but her music is crazy.” She appreciates Azealia’s practice of mixing genres and merging them into her own, distinctive sound. Another favourite is Rico Nasty because “she embodies so much freedom. I love her rockstar image and her looks.” Helina's LIT(TLE) TITS is "kurz und knackig” (short and crunchy), so that people have no excuse not to give these female artists a listen. Her next set in this series will be smoother and focus on emerging female artists from the UK. The title is an attack on body shaming and an invitation to body positivity. “I want women to be able to walk around however they want, with a bra, without a bra, looking any way they like”, she explains. “Women are always sexualised, but we need to learn to have trust in our bodies. It makes me so angry that it’s always men who get to decide what’s appropriate and what’s sexual. Even when I uploaded the artwork, I got so mad, because I had to censor the nipples. If it were naked men, of course I wouldn’t have to do that.”
When she is not playing decks, Helina studies architecture and experiments with the camera as a photographer and a model. Upon becoming a Berliner, she discovered the capital’s voguing scene. It made her question the purpose and intention of her art, and she has since stopped going to dance battles. “I’m done travelling somewhere to dance for a minute and get judged for it”, she says and shrugs. “I want to experiment and am becoming too fluid to fit into a category that you can judge me on.” Entering the world of balls, performance, and styling, she now believes that art should not be rated but simply lived. “I don’t stubbornly stick to hip hop anymore, I want to move away from boxes. The people at balls dance to express themselves in a different way. They create a safe space and move within it, it’s fascinating”, she smiles. Germany is still an overwhelmingly conservative country, and these spaces are rare. “What I learned is that it doesn’t always have to be so serious and that it’s dangerous to rate art. I want to be good at what I do, because I love doing it. In my dance, my music, my photography.”
Helina’s final artist recommendation is UK rapper and DJ shygirl. She says, “She inspires me because she created a new sound that we haven’t heard before. Also, check out her visuals.” For now, here is the LIT(TTLE) TITS tracklist. Stay tuned for new mixes coming, and do not miss out on watching Helina deejay if you come to Berlin.