un
Un - Reflections on 2020 Body of work developed for exhibition with Quiddity Collective, 2021.
UNstoppable
Unstoppable; Karen Hansen (2021); Acrylic, Alcohol Ink ,Hand-Gathered Earth Pigment, Dried KawaKawa, Metal leafing.
Sold - Private Collector
This work looks back to the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907, a law that criminalised Māori spiritual and healing practice until its repeal in 1962. During another time of imported disease, fear and cultural disruption, rongoā Māori and wairuatanga were treated not as taonga, but as threats to be controlled.
I made this work while reflecting on how easily crisis can be used as a doorway for domination. How care can be used as a language for control. How indigenous knowledge, women’s knowledge, plant knowledge and spiritual knowledge have so often been dismissed, suppressed, or made UNsafe and UNacceptable.
The dried kawakawa in this work stands as a living reminder: healing and spiritual power does not disappear because it is forbidden. Just as the memories and love we posess do not disappear just because our loved ones have passed.
Unstoppable is a small act of witness. A remembering. A prayer that we look clearly at the past, to recognise the patterns before they repeat.
Arohanui.
I made this work while reflecting on how easily crisis can be used as a doorway for domination. How care can be used as a language for control. How indigenous knowledge, women’s knowledge, plant knowledge and spiritual knowledge have so often been dismissed, suppressed, or made UNsafe and UNacceptable.
The dried kawakawa in this work stands as a living reminder: healing and spiritual power does not disappear because it is forbidden. Just as the memories and love we posess do not disappear just because our loved ones have passed.
Unstoppable is a small act of witness. A remembering. A prayer that we look clearly at the past, to recognise the patterns before they repeat.
Arohanui.
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UNconscious
Unconscious; Karen Hansen (2021); Acrylic, Alcohol Ink ,Hand-Gathered Earth Pigment, 925 Sterling Silver.
Sold - Private Collector
At the beginning of March 2020, when our greatest inconvenience still seemed to be the cancellation of a Whitesnake concert, my fiancé and I packed our bags and went instead to Matatā Beach. We did not yet understand that within a fortnight, the country would be in lockdown.
The ocean has always been healer and confidante for me. I stand in the water and let the waves draw emotion from my body. I bury my feet in the shifting ground and find balance there. I speak with her, and I watch for the answer. It always comes, though rarely in the form I expect.
On Matatā Beach, the answer came during a sunrise walk, in the form of a small shell. I placed it in my pocket and later cast it in silver, transforming it into a talisman.
For me, this work holds the quiet power of the unconscious: the hidden tide beneath our choices, our grief, our instincts and our becoming. Before we knew the world was about to change, something in me was already listening. The shell became a witness to that unseen knowing, and to the deep waters shaping our lives long before the conscious mind can name them.
The ocean has always been healer and confidante for me. I stand in the water and let the waves draw emotion from my body. I bury my feet in the shifting ground and find balance there. I speak with her, and I watch for the answer. It always comes, though rarely in the form I expect.
On Matatā Beach, the answer came during a sunrise walk, in the form of a small shell. I placed it in my pocket and later cast it in silver, transforming it into a talisman.
For me, this work holds the quiet power of the unconscious: the hidden tide beneath our choices, our grief, our instincts and our becoming. Before we knew the world was about to change, something in me was already listening. The shell became a witness to that unseen knowing, and to the deep waters shaping our lives long before the conscious mind can name them.
UNdivided
Undivided; Karen Hansen (2021); Acrylic, Alcohol Ink ,Hand-Gathered Earth Pigment, Kowhai Flora, Resin.
Sold - Private Collector
This work draws on kōwhai-tūranga-ora, the Tree of Life: a symbol of authority and the powers held by those we look to for help, healing and survival. Yet kōwhai carries contradiction. Its golden bloom signals beauty, spring and renewal, while parts of the plant hold poison.
During the pandemic, yellow was not only yellow in Aotearoa. It was #FFCC00: Pantone 116 coated, Pantone 114 uncoated. A colour standardised into instruction, urgency and compliance. Branded, repeated and unavoidable, it appeared across signs, screens, borders, warnings and public health messaging. It entered the body as a colour of command.
Undivided is a response to the way language of care can become a mechanism of separation. Under the banner of unity, people were divided by access, compliance, fear, belief, status and belonging. Families fractured. Communities turned on themselves. The neighbour became risk. The body became a site of suspicion. Human connection became conditional.
This work does not reject collective responsibility. It asks what happens when responsibility is shaped through coercion, when protection begins to resemble punishment, and when the powers we gather beneath for safety also teach us to turn away from one another.
For me, Undivided holds the ache of that contradiction. Healing and poison. Care and control. Unity and exclusion. The Tree of Life standing in full bloom, asking who is allowed beneath its branches, and who has been left outside.
During the pandemic, yellow was not only yellow in Aotearoa. It was #FFCC00: Pantone 116 coated, Pantone 114 uncoated. A colour standardised into instruction, urgency and compliance. Branded, repeated and unavoidable, it appeared across signs, screens, borders, warnings and public health messaging. It entered the body as a colour of command.
Undivided is a response to the way language of care can become a mechanism of separation. Under the banner of unity, people were divided by access, compliance, fear, belief, status and belonging. Families fractured. Communities turned on themselves. The neighbour became risk. The body became a site of suspicion. Human connection became conditional.
This work does not reject collective responsibility. It asks what happens when responsibility is shaped through coercion, when protection begins to resemble punishment, and when the powers we gather beneath for safety also teach us to turn away from one another.
For me, Undivided holds the ache of that contradiction. Healing and poison. Care and control. Unity and exclusion. The Tree of Life standing in full bloom, asking who is allowed beneath its branches, and who has been left outside.
UNafraid
Unafraid; Karen Hansen (2021);Acrylic, Red Ochre, Alcohol ink , white sage smoke; 1220x600x35
On Gallery Canvas
Available on Enquiry
This work arose from my study of leadership, art therapy and the human response to fear. Fear is one of the oldest tools of governance. It can be used to alert and protect, but also to direct behaviour, narrow perception, divide communities and steer populations toward desired outcomes.
During the pandemic, fear became atmospheric. It entered the body through numbers, warnings, headlines, distance, repetition and uncertainty. It shaped not only what we did, but how we saw one another. I understand fear as both political and biological. It does not remain outside us. It moves through the nervous system, the immune system, the breath, the gut, the heart, the skin, our very cells. When fear is sustained and repeatedly activated, it can become a condition we live inside, making us more vulnerable physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.
Unafraid is my refusal to let fear become the primary author of my life.
Made with red ochre, alcohol ink and white sage smoke, this work is both image and invocation. The ochre grounds it in earth, blood and ancestral memory. The smoke carries purification, prayer and release. Together, they form a binding statement: a sacred threshold to return to when the mind is being pulled toward panic, judgement or control.
This work is a mantra, a refuge, and a reminder that the inner state is never separate from the larger world. The microcosm responds to the macrocosm. The heart remains a compass.
During the pandemic, fear became atmospheric. It entered the body through numbers, warnings, headlines, distance, repetition and uncertainty. It shaped not only what we did, but how we saw one another. I understand fear as both political and biological. It does not remain outside us. It moves through the nervous system, the immune system, the breath, the gut, the heart, the skin, our very cells. When fear is sustained and repeatedly activated, it can become a condition we live inside, making us more vulnerable physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.
Unafraid is my refusal to let fear become the primary author of my life.
Made with red ochre, alcohol ink and white sage smoke, this work is both image and invocation. The ochre grounds it in earth, blood and ancestral memory. The smoke carries purification, prayer and release. Together, they form a binding statement: a sacred threshold to return to when the mind is being pulled toward panic, judgement or control.
This work is a mantra, a refuge, and a reminder that the inner state is never separate from the larger world. The microcosm responds to the macrocosm. The heart remains a compass.
UNmasked
Unmasked; Karen Hansen (2021); Tinfoil, Duct Tape, Acrylic, Medical Hose (circa 1960’s Rotorua Hospital), Plastic, Metal, NZ Forces Buttons (circa WW1), Fine Art Resin. 1020x1020x390 mm
On frame Stretched Canvas
Available on Enquiry
This mixed media assemblage is a socio-political commentary on narratives of power, influence, fear and control. An oversized plague mask, built with the familiar absurdity of tinfoil and duct tape, leans out from the work and enters the viewer’s personal space. It watches through salvaged computer components, part doctor, part soldier, part machine, part theatre.
The Victorian medical reference, military buttons and reclaimed hospital hose draw together histories of illness, authority, surveillance, empire and obedience. They also gesture toward the colonial suppression of Indigenous healing knowledge in Aotearoa, including the Tohunga Suppression Act, under which rongoā Māori and wairuatanga were pushed into danger, silence and illegitimacy beneath the claimed authority of Western medicine and the so-called greater good.
Unmasked recognises a repeating pattern: during times of disease and fear, those in power can become most dangerous when their authority is wrapped in the language of protection. What is named care can also become coercion. What is named science can become unquestionable doctrine. What is named public good can be used to divide, shame, silence and exclude.
This work asks what is revealed when the mask of benevolence slips.
It looks back through plague, empire, colonisation, institutional medicine, military force and digital culture to ask how narratives are built, who benefits from them, and what happens to the bodies, voices and knowledges that are forced outside the approved frame.
Unmasked is confrontational by design. It juts forward. It intrudes. It refuses polite distance. It asks the viewer to stand before the face of authority and notice what is looking back.
The Victorian medical reference, military buttons and reclaimed hospital hose draw together histories of illness, authority, surveillance, empire and obedience. They also gesture toward the colonial suppression of Indigenous healing knowledge in Aotearoa, including the Tohunga Suppression Act, under which rongoā Māori and wairuatanga were pushed into danger, silence and illegitimacy beneath the claimed authority of Western medicine and the so-called greater good.
Unmasked recognises a repeating pattern: during times of disease and fear, those in power can become most dangerous when their authority is wrapped in the language of protection. What is named care can also become coercion. What is named science can become unquestionable doctrine. What is named public good can be used to divide, shame, silence and exclude.
This work asks what is revealed when the mask of benevolence slips.
It looks back through plague, empire, colonisation, institutional medicine, military force and digital culture to ask how narratives are built, who benefits from them, and what happens to the bodies, voices and knowledges that are forced outside the approved frame.
Unmasked is confrontational by design. It juts forward. It intrudes. It refuses polite distance. It asks the viewer to stand before the face of authority and notice what is looking back.