Nanna Hänninen

It might be surprising to call the works of Nanna Hänninen (Rovaniemi, Finland, 1973) landscapes. They are photographs that, in Nanna's own words, "draw the movements of my body merging with the landscape." In this way, the human presence becomes explicit and decisively transforms the setting, turning it into something abstract yet more manageable. Light and long exposures configure a language with a syntax that speaks of the individual immersed in their external environment and their control over it, or lack thereof. Nanna creates musical scores punctuated by the beating of her heart, her movements, and her laughter, all vital experiences in a real world that amplifies their sounds like a percussion box. The boundaries between the individual and the universal are blurred by an artifact, the camera, which acts as a unifying prosthesis of subject and object, self and other. Ultimately, Nanna dares to challenge the paradigm of photography and its canonical representation of reality.

In her most recent projects, Nanna unifies photography and painting through figurative and abstract approaches, respectively, this conceptual approach being one of her most original features. Concern over the environmental situation facing our current society and conflicts within relationships constitute the background of the ideas the artist develops, not only from a social but also a political perspective. The pieces depicting people are symbolic of our individual alienation and our—perhaps lost—connection with nature and time.