project taniwha
Taniwha is not only the being in the deep emotional waters. 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 (2018-2020), 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.
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Broken (2018)
Karen Hansen, BROKEN, 2018MIXED MEDIA ON PORCELAIN AND TEXTILE.Size 60x25x25
No shame No Silence Public Collection (New Zealand)
Once upon a time, there was a 5 year old girl who lived with her Mother in a small flat. Her Mother had many bad people around and the little girl saw many things she kept silent about. She knew she was deeply loved, but she was also deeply lonely.One day, her Aunt brought a beautiful dolly back from a trip overseas. She had curly hair and a lovely gown. The little girl named the doll ‘Felicity’ and she was not so lonely anymore.Whilst bad people came and went, so did the Police. The little girl found it hard to tell the difference between the good men and the bad men. She and her Mother would go out and return home to find their little flat broken into and trashed by partygoers - but they would also return home to find it broken into and trashed with a search warrant lying on the table like a calling card, or taped to the door Police had kicked in.One day, when all had been quiet, a loud banging series of knocks disturbed the peace. She knew what that sound meant: “OPEN UP, POLICE”This time, an Angry Man was with them. He bossed everyone around, and got angrier as the search went on and nothing was found. The Police used the little girls bedroom to strip everybody naked, to look for things they were hiding. She watched, and stood out of the way holding Felicity.The Angry Policeman caught the little girls eye. He sneered, and snatched her dolly out of her arms. He looked right at her, as he said “There must be drugs in here…”, holding up her friend, and smashed poor Felicity’s porcelain head off on the corner of the wooden cabinet.The silence was too strong, the little girl cried quietly. He gave her the doll back, with sharp edges and no head. Some of her stuffing was pulled out, as he had halfheartedly pretended to look for contraband hiding inside the doll.Felicity was Broken, The girl was Broken, the very system which was meant to protect and serve, was the same one who broke them.
BROKEN (2018) Is a healing work, utilising this true event in 1988 as an anchor point for the destruction within the artists childhood. In creating this mixed media sculpture, Karen returned to that flat, and that moment within a creative space - found her child self , held her and soothed her: something which was never done in reality. She broke that silence and told herself “It’s ok, I love you. I forgive you. Thankyou for being so strong, and becoming the person I am today… it’s all worked out fine” She then turned to the Police Officer, standing still in time, and told him: “I forgive you too. Your choices were not kind, but mine will be. You are the Past, and I am the Future.”
BROKEN is a message both of corruption, and hope. The little girl nevertheless became a strong woman (with a doll obsession) who is looked to as a leader, and has successfully raised three strong children of her own, and strives to encourage empowerment through shared experience and grassroots platforms.The colour palette speaks of the japanese art of repairing with gold “You are more beautiful for having been broken” and the white gown is handmade in conjunction with the artist and her Grandmother, using fabric from her daughters ball gown. This speaks to sacred healing power of the feminine joining together, as well as the breaking of intergenerational patterns. The pain ends here..
Once upon a time, there was a 5 year old girl who lived with her Mother in a small flat. Her Mother had many bad people around and the little girl saw many things she kept silent about. She knew she was deeply loved, but she was also deeply lonely.One day, her Aunt brought a beautiful dolly back from a trip overseas. She had curly hair and a lovely gown. The little girl named the doll ‘Felicity’ and she was not so lonely anymore.Whilst bad people came and went, so did the Police. The little girl found it hard to tell the difference between the good men and the bad men. She and her Mother would go out and return home to find their little flat broken into and trashed by partygoers - but they would also return home to find it broken into and trashed with a search warrant lying on the table like a calling card, or taped to the door Police had kicked in.One day, when all had been quiet, a loud banging series of knocks disturbed the peace. She knew what that sound meant: “OPEN UP, POLICE”This time, an Angry Man was with them. He bossed everyone around, and got angrier as the search went on and nothing was found. The Police used the little girls bedroom to strip everybody naked, to look for things they were hiding. She watched, and stood out of the way holding Felicity.The Angry Policeman caught the little girls eye. He sneered, and snatched her dolly out of her arms. He looked right at her, as he said “There must be drugs in here…”, holding up her friend, and smashed poor Felicity’s porcelain head off on the corner of the wooden cabinet.The silence was too strong, the little girl cried quietly. He gave her the doll back, with sharp edges and no head. Some of her stuffing was pulled out, as he had halfheartedly pretended to look for contraband hiding inside the doll.Felicity was Broken, The girl was Broken, the very system which was meant to protect and serve, was the same one who broke them.
BROKEN (2018) Is a healing work, utilising this true event in 1988 as an anchor point for the destruction within the artists childhood. In creating this mixed media sculpture, Karen returned to that flat, and that moment within a creative space - found her child self , held her and soothed her: something which was never done in reality. She broke that silence and told herself “It’s ok, I love you. I forgive you. Thankyou for being so strong, and becoming the person I am today… it’s all worked out fine” She then turned to the Police Officer, standing still in time, and told him: “I forgive you too. Your choices were not kind, but mine will be. You are the Past, and I am the Future.”
BROKEN is a message both of corruption, and hope. The little girl nevertheless became a strong woman (with a doll obsession) who is looked to as a leader, and has successfully raised three strong children of her own, and strives to encourage empowerment through shared experience and grassroots platforms.The colour palette speaks of the japanese art of repairing with gold “You are more beautiful for having been broken” and the white gown is handmade in conjunction with the artist and her Grandmother, using fabric from her daughters ball gown. This speaks to sacred healing power of the feminine joining together, as well as the breaking of intergenerational patterns. The pain ends here..
The Lover (2019)
Karen Hansen, 2019THE LOVERMerino, 200-year-old silk, linen, ink, brass
THE LOVER is a small textile work concerned with self-love as a radical and difficult act.
Made with merino, linen, brass, ink, and 200-year-old silk, the piece holds a delicate tension between inheritance and becoming. The age of the silk carries the presence of the past, while the stitched gold thread reaches forward, attempting repair, connection, and new understanding.
This work is not about self-love as sentiment. It speaks to the emotional labour of meeting the parts of the self that have been exiled, ignored, or made monstrous. In a culture that profits from discontent, to return to the self with tenderness is a revolutionary act.
The stitching is intentionally imperfect. It mends, binds, catches, and scaffolds. It holds the surface together without pretending the wound has disappeared. THE LOVER sits at the threshold between rupture and devotion, asking what it means to descend into emotional depth without drowning, and to emerge still willing to love.
THE LOVER is a small textile work concerned with self-love as a radical and difficult act.
Made with merino, linen, brass, ink, and 200-year-old silk, the piece holds a delicate tension between inheritance and becoming. The age of the silk carries the presence of the past, while the stitched gold thread reaches forward, attempting repair, connection, and new understanding.
This work is not about self-love as sentiment. It speaks to the emotional labour of meeting the parts of the self that have been exiled, ignored, or made monstrous. In a culture that profits from discontent, to return to the self with tenderness is a revolutionary act.
The stitching is intentionally imperfect. It mends, binds, catches, and scaffolds. It holds the surface together without pretending the wound has disappeared. THE LOVER sits at the threshold between rupture and devotion, asking what it means to descend into emotional depth without drowning, and to emerge still willing to love.
Oracle (2019)
The work brings together acrylic, silicone, paper, shellac, and taxidermy, including the foraged head of a kāhu, preserved through traditional methods. These materials form a charged anthropomorphic figure with visual roots in Victorian mourning objects, Māori ancestral presence, cross-cultural goddess symbology, and devotional relic.
Oracle is talismanic. She stands as watcher, warning, and witness. She belongs to the dark waters of the psyche, where grief, instinct, memory, and transformation gather. Through her, I was beginning to understand the feminine not only as beauty or nurture, but as oracle, predator, protector, and threshold
Oracle is talismanic. She stands as watcher, warning, and witness. She belongs to the dark waters of the psyche, where grief, instinct, memory, and transformation gather. Through her, I was beginning to understand the feminine not only as beauty or nurture, but as oracle, predator, protector, and threshold
Confessions of Darkness and Light (2019)
Karen Hansen, 2019Confessions of Darkness and LightAcrylic, earth and plant pigments, calligraphy ink
The painting holds anonymous statements gifted to me by people from many different walks of life. These were confessions of darkness: experiences of pain, rupture, shame, grief, fear, and inner descent. Alongside them were the lessons each person carried forward from those places.
What emerged through this research was a profound common thread. Although the painful experiences were varied and deeply individual, the light gathered from them often returned to the same core wisdom: self-knowledge, compassion, courage, truth, and the reclamation of personal power.
The surface of the work is layered with acrylic, earth and plant pigments, calligraphy ink, and handwritten testimony. The text becomes almost overwhelming, echoing the density of lived experience and the difficulty of speaking what has been hidden.
The painting holds anonymous statements gifted to me by people from many different walks of life. These were confessions of darkness: experiences of pain, rupture, shame, grief, fear, and inner descent. Alongside them were the lessons each person carried forward from those places.
What emerged through this research was a profound common thread. Although the painful experiences were varied and deeply individual, the light gathered from them often returned to the same core wisdom: self-knowledge, compassion, courage, truth, and the reclamation of personal power.
The surface of the work is layered with acrylic, earth and plant pigments, calligraphy ink, and handwritten testimony. The text becomes almost overwhelming, echoing the density of lived experience and the difficulty of speaking what has been hidden.
Pandora's Book (2017)
No Shame, No Silence Public Collection (New Zealand)
Pandora’s Book is a mixed media relic of shadow, rupture, and reclamation.
The work contains a private archive of painful experiences: words, wounds, and actions once carried as if they belonged to me. Across the outer pages, the surface has been stabbed, torn, scribbled over, and marked with tears. The making was physically and emotionally difficult, and at one point I wanted to burn the sculpture.
The true work occurred in the moment I understood that these experiences were not mine to keep. They belonged to the people who spoke and enacted them.
From that point, the book changed. At the centre of the fold-out structure, made from eight stitched concertinas using Victorian thread, I placed a three-dimensional heart. The inner pages became a chamber of blossoming light, filled with statements of self-love and the truth I was beginning to reclaim.
Pandora’s Book draws on the myth of Pandora, who released suffering into the world but kept hope safe. Pandoras Book asks what can be made from what has broken us, and how the wounded self might become more beautiful because of it.
The work contains a private archive of painful experiences: words, wounds, and actions once carried as if they belonged to me. Across the outer pages, the surface has been stabbed, torn, scribbled over, and marked with tears. The making was physically and emotionally difficult, and at one point I wanted to burn the sculpture.
The true work occurred in the moment I understood that these experiences were not mine to keep. They belonged to the people who spoke and enacted them.
From that point, the book changed. At the centre of the fold-out structure, made from eight stitched concertinas using Victorian thread, I placed a three-dimensional heart. The inner pages became a chamber of blossoming light, filled with statements of self-love and the truth I was beginning to reclaim.
Pandora’s Book draws on the myth of Pandora, who released suffering into the world but kept hope safe. Pandoras Book asks what can be made from what has broken us, and how the wounded self might become more beautiful because of it.
Inside (2019)
Karen Hansen, 2019INSIDEAcrylic on canvas200 x 200 mm
INSIDE is an inner portrait of an anonymous subject, created as part of my social project Taniwha.
The work gives visual form to a moment of psychological descent: a state of darkness, self-destruction, suicidal ideation, and emotional overwhelm. Rather than depicting the subject externally, INSIDE attempts to witness the interior terrain they described: a place of sludge, rupture, swarm, pressure, and survival at the edge.
Painted in dense black acrylic and scratched, marked, and distressed across the surface, the work holds the force of a mind under siege. The small scale intensifies the claustrophobia of the piece. It becomes less a portrait than a chamber.
INSIDE is an inner portrait of an anonymous subject, created as part of my social project Taniwha.
The work gives visual form to a moment of psychological descent: a state of darkness, self-destruction, suicidal ideation, and emotional overwhelm. Rather than depicting the subject externally, INSIDE attempts to witness the interior terrain they described: a place of sludge, rupture, swarm, pressure, and survival at the edge.
Painted in dense black acrylic and scratched, marked, and distressed across the surface, the work holds the force of a mind under siege. The small scale intensifies the claustrophobia of the piece. It becomes less a portrait than a chamber.
DAUGHTER OF PUNGA (2022-2023)
COMISSIONED BY WAITANGI ROTORUA | TUNOHOPU MARAE
Karen Hansen (2022-2023)Model: Connie Takarangi -Te Ati Haunui-a-Pāpārangi.
Photography: Nikki Goldfinch | Snaparelic
“Every Feather must be collected from the Rohe” her energy told me, “Fallen from the trees, the wind, wings lying still - flightless and silent. These endings, found in swamps and marshes, trails trodden by old and new. Sometimes battered from their journeys, leave them as they are. I am created from the broken and the beautiful. I rise, covered in the green of life and also of death. I live in the place between sleeping and waking, land and sky, water and earth. Let me walk and carve new patterns in the mud and clay." And so a journey of collection began. This Artwork was both in the process and in the living sculpture you see before you: expressing herself, dancing and raging. Powerful, yet silent. Feathers of Manu who gave their lives - Koau, Pukeko, Magpie. The misfits, the rebels. The sacred. “There is no birth without blood”. Kurangaituku demanded more. “Go to the Maunga” she said. "Gather Kokowai with prayer. It is the blood of Papatuanuku: the Earth Mother. Tell the trees what you are doing, and why, the Ngahere has long been my friend.” So I gathered the red ochre and ground it into dust. Sacred Dust, the dust of all creation. But what to blend it with? I could not just rub it onto her body. Then came the storms.. A Months worth of rain in a night “Put out a jar” She said: “Collect it. Let it overflow. Harness the mauri. Mix it with that”. So I did, and it was perfect. Land and Sky together: Divine Masculine, and Divine Feminine. “But I am a Weaver” She said, “ I must have Harakeke”. “I don’t have time!” I wailed. “I am only one woman. I don’t know Raranga, It will be too hard!” “Here are the Rau” came the answer, as a ready cut sheaf of Harakeke appeared almost on my lawn. “I want you to learn”.“I hear you, I hear you”. I found myself a kaiako, my stepdaughter Toni-Elizabeth (Ngati Wairere) to teach me the basics of weaving, and preparation. I sat with the Harakeke bushes and allowed them to speak to me in their own way. I discovered the gel, I marvelled at it’s rongoa, practicality and wairua. I wove, and as I did, I felt a great peace settle over me. I entered her doorway, I was within the realm she walked. Meditative, spiritual. I understood what she wanted me to know: that this, like all creative acts, is an action of power. That we are powerful, if we remember. That we all weave our lives together, our whanau, our world. We are bound to eachother, and we do the binding. Punga, you see - is the God of Hateful and Hideous things. The things we don’t want to see, that we push into the shadow-realm. The things we curse, and shrink from and blame for all our troubles- yet place at the entrances to our most sacred places as threshold guardians. It is not, she reminds us, from comfort and ease that light is born. It is from the darkness. The Divine Monsters.
“Every Feather must be collected from the Rohe” her energy told me, “Fallen from the trees, the wind, wings lying still - flightless and silent. These endings, found in swamps and marshes, trails trodden by old and new. Sometimes battered from their journeys, leave them as they are. I am created from the broken and the beautiful. I rise, covered in the green of life and also of death. I live in the place between sleeping and waking, land and sky, water and earth. Let me walk and carve new patterns in the mud and clay." And so a journey of collection began. This Artwork was both in the process and in the living sculpture you see before you: expressing herself, dancing and raging. Powerful, yet silent. Feathers of Manu who gave their lives - Koau, Pukeko, Magpie. The misfits, the rebels. The sacred. “There is no birth without blood”. Kurangaituku demanded more. “Go to the Maunga” she said. "Gather Kokowai with prayer. It is the blood of Papatuanuku: the Earth Mother. Tell the trees what you are doing, and why, the Ngahere has long been my friend.” So I gathered the red ochre and ground it into dust. Sacred Dust, the dust of all creation. But what to blend it with? I could not just rub it onto her body. Then came the storms.. A Months worth of rain in a night “Put out a jar” She said: “Collect it. Let it overflow. Harness the mauri. Mix it with that”. So I did, and it was perfect. Land and Sky together: Divine Masculine, and Divine Feminine. “But I am a Weaver” She said, “ I must have Harakeke”. “I don’t have time!” I wailed. “I am only one woman. I don’t know Raranga, It will be too hard!” “Here are the Rau” came the answer, as a ready cut sheaf of Harakeke appeared almost on my lawn. “I want you to learn”.“I hear you, I hear you”. I found myself a kaiako, my stepdaughter Toni-Elizabeth (Ngati Wairere) to teach me the basics of weaving, and preparation. I sat with the Harakeke bushes and allowed them to speak to me in their own way. I discovered the gel, I marvelled at it’s rongoa, practicality and wairua. I wove, and as I did, I felt a great peace settle over me. I entered her doorway, I was within the realm she walked. Meditative, spiritual. I understood what she wanted me to know: that this, like all creative acts, is an action of power. That we are powerful, if we remember. That we all weave our lives together, our whanau, our world. We are bound to eachother, and we do the binding. Punga, you see - is the God of Hateful and Hideous things. The things we don’t want to see, that we push into the shadow-realm. The things we curse, and shrink from and blame for all our troubles- yet place at the entrances to our most sacred places as threshold guardians. It is not, she reminds us, from comfort and ease that light is born. It is from the darkness. The Divine Monsters.
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