karen hansen art archive
Taniwha is the one who has learned to move between depths.The one who knows the star road and the root road; the Celestial and Terrestrial.The one who heals, teaches, sees, guards, and destroys what cannot pass. The Monster at the entrance to our most sacred places.
Project Taniwha (2018), began with Karen's own recognition of 'gifts of darkness' she has endured over her lifetime. Later that year, Project Taniwha received 106 anonymous human truths. Different genders, faiths, ages, cultures.But when so many stories were stripped bare, this wisdom remained:
All pain carries the same invitation:To return to the Light through the dark.
Project Taniwha (2018), began with Karen's own recognition of 'gifts of darkness' she has endured over her lifetime. Later that year, Project Taniwha received 106 anonymous human truths. Different genders, faiths, ages, cultures.But when so many stories were stripped bare, this wisdom remained:
All pain carries the same invitation:To return to the Light through the dark.
Project Taniwha (2018-2020)
A formative research body developed during the final years of my Bachelor of Art and subsequent leadership study. Although never brought to formal exhibition, it remains a significant ancestor within the whakapapa of my practice.
This work began with an inquiry into the active creative influence of sound vibration: how specific frequencies move through matter, how water and particulate surfaces respond, and how geometry can emerge from forces that are otherwise invisible. Through this research, I began to understand image-making as something relational rather than solely authored.
Cymatics taught me that the invisible is not empty. It is active, patterned, and capable of becoming visible through the right conditions of attention.
This work began with an inquiry into the active creative influence of sound vibration: how specific frequencies move through matter, how water and particulate surfaces respond, and how geometry can emerge from forces that are otherwise invisible. Through this research, I began to understand image-making as something relational rather than solely authored.
Cymatics taught me that the invisible is not empty. It is active, patterned, and capable of becoming visible through the right conditions of attention.
Cymatics Art Research (2018-2021)
UN (2021)
UN was born in the long strange unravelling of 2021, during a time when the world seemed to be coming undone in public and in private, all at once. UN is interested in the paradox of destruction as a kind of beginning. How an undoing can become an opening. How the loss of certainty can return us to deeper listening. UN was formed for group exhibition with Quiddity Collective, a creative circle who formed a studio together during Karen's time at Art School and continue to meet, brainstorm and make together as life allows. UN specifically explores Karen Hansen's personal experience of the era.
Dystopia (2022)
The Dystopia Works, were inspired by Karen's award winning sculpture "Battlefish" which received both Judges and Peoples Choice at the Rotorua Arts Trail 'Fish out of Water'.
Battlefish was not able to be saved in his original form, as the Sculpture Trail required his fibreglass body to be cleaned and returned. However, utilising taxidermic skills and Fine Art Resin - Karen revived and resurrected pieces of Battlefish into several works of the same dystopian world.