KAREN HANSEN (DANIELS) Multidisciplinary Artist Rotorua, New Zealand.
Website: www.karenhansenart.com
Email: karenhansen@xtra.co.nz
EDUCATION & TRAINING
- Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership and Professional Mentoring (Level 7), 2021
- Bachelor of Creative Technologies (Art & Materials Major), Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology, 2020
- New Zealand Diploma of Art and Design (Level 6), 2018
- New Zealand Diploma of Art and Design (Level 5), 2017
PRACTICE STATEMENT
Karen Hansen (Daniels) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Rotorua, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Her practice is grounded in place-responsive, process-led research and explores relational approaches to creativity that engage land, material, and embodied attention as active contributors to meaning-making.Working across installation, textile-based works, printmaking, assemblage, ritual adornment, and embodied live works, Hansen employs methodologies informed by ecological materiality, animistic cosmology, and sustained attentional practices in the natural environment. Her work prioritises listening, reciprocity, and material agency, and often involves site-responsive processes within geothermal and forested landscapes.Hansen’s practice is underpinned by the framework Sussurrus / Communion / Awen, which articulates cycles of observation, exchange, and co-creative emergence. Through this approach, she develops works that invite sensory, reflective, and participatory engagement, contributing to contemporary conversations around place, ecology, and relational modes of knowing. Her work Primordial was awarded the Watts & Hughes Innovation Award at the Rotorua Museum Art Awards in 2026.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS & PROJECTS
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
- Artful, Penny Haka Gallery, Rotorua (Matariki), 2017
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
- Finalist Exhibition, Rotorua Museum Art Awards 2026.
- And Again!, Rotorua Arts Village, 2026
- UN, Quiddity Collective, Rotorua Arts Village, 2021
- And Again!, Rotorua Arts Village, 2020
- TOI19, Rotorua Lakes Council Galleria, 2019
- Te Haerenga / Journey, Rotorua Arts Village, 2019
- Man’s Best Friend, Helium Gallery, Rotorua, 2018
- No Shame No Silence, Nieuwe Stroom, Foxton, 2018
- 200 Show, Rotorua Arts Village, 2018, 2019, 2021.
PUBLIC ART, COMMISSIONS & AWARDS
- Watts & Hughes Innovation Award, Rotorua Museum Art Awards, 2026 Awarded for Primordial, judged by Julie Catchpole
- Finalist: Rotorua Museum Art Awards 2026 (Curated/Judged by Julie Catchpole)
- NRL Body Art Commission, Rotorua International Stadium, 2023
- Daughter of Punga, Living Sculpture / Embodied Performance, Waitangi Rotorua Commission, 2022
- Fish Out of Water, Sculpture Trail, Rotorua : Dual Award Winner (Judges’ Choice & People’s Choice), 2020
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE & CONTRIBUTION
- Artist Talk, Rotorua Arts Village, 2017,2021
- Keynote Speaker, No Shame No Silence Exhibition (Foxton) 2018.
- Keynote Speaker, Hamilton PechaKucha PK40, 2019
- Keynote Speaker, ARTSMAD Rotorua, 2019,2021
- Delivery of creative workshops and participatory art experiences across community, festival, and institutional settings
- Ongoing facilitation of artist-led, process-based creative engagement
PRIOR INTERDISCIPLINARY EXPERIENCE (SELECTED)
- Head Stylist / SFX and Body Art, Wildside Productions, Rotorua Museum and Sir Howard Morrison Centre, 2013–2025
- Creative Director and Producer, immersive and participatory events, 2011–2018
- Featured Designer, OHO Fashion Show, 2017
- Head Stylist, Indigenous Runway Project, Global Indigenous Management, 2015
CURRENT FOCUS
- Development of the Geothermal Index body of work
- Studio-based and site-responsive research in geothermal and ecological landscapes
- Exploration of participatory, sensory, and embodied modes of encounter
- Expansion of Indexical Practice, seeking wider ways in which to give the land it's own voice and unique substrates to write upon in keeping with the material language and archival considerations.
- Ongoing material research into botanical inks, earth pigments, and process-led making.