ELIZABETH HANSEN
Interview by Kate Mothes, June 5, 2023.
Elizabeth Hansen’s multi-disciplinary practice incorporates performance, installation, video, sculpture, and photography. Informed by her childhood in a conservative small town in Michigan, her work is often loosely autobiographical, tapping into experiences and responses to social norms, gender roles, cultural institutions, and adulthood. After 20 years in New York and Paris, she now lives in a village in Switzerland, halfway between Geneva and Lausanne. Recently, she has examined the use of algorithms on social media, bringing an irreverent regard to the subject in a series of performances and interventions. Using a playful approach, she aims to provoke serious evaluation of the status quo.
Kate Mothes: One of the things that I was curious about right off the bat is whether your educational foundation in economics and art history set the stage for your practice in any way, or if you circled around to making your own art a little bit later?
Elizabeth Hansen: Yes, economics and art history play into it for sure, but I was also harboring a latent artist. I always used to make things. I have a rather odd story about that: at 12 years old or so, I decided that if I couldn't make a perfectly round snowball, I had no business continuing making art at all. And I couldn't! So I said, okay, that's it. Later, I started studying economics, and then accidentally fell into art history as well. It was while working in arts administration that I realized that I wanted to be making art.
Le Chasseron, Swiss Jura, 2021
One thing that I got a read on with series like F UR A and earlier projects, too, is that there's a somewhat cynical—maybe more humorous twist on topics, very much calling out the absurdity of certain cultural institutions or social norms. When did those ideas begin to occur to you, and you began to think, I need to put a focus on this?
I think it has to do with childhood and where I grew up. I know you're a fellow Midwesterner, so I don't know if any of this applies to you, but I grew up in this super conservative community where it really wasn't much fun to be female, or in any way non-conformist. Even though I wasn't really that far outside of the dominant culture, I didn't do things the way everybody else did.
And here I'm specifically talking about religion. A black cloud hung over me because I didn’t go to church every Sunday. While I wasn't totally excluded, I wasn’t exactly accepted either. There was this oppressive kind of feeling combined with hypocrisy because the same people who were sanctimoniously judging me (and others) were, of course, imperfect human beings doing all kinds of unsanctioned things.
So that was really where my sensitivity to absurdity came from.
It's a structure that we use, right? Religion, like marriage–really any kind of social structure that we have–is there to give us a foothold in the world, something to make sense of it all, a kind of instruction manual. That works well for a lot of people, but it can be really uncomfortable to be outside of those things, and yet so many people are. When I was growing up, I was enough outside of the dominant culture to feel panic mingled with defiance, like, “Really? Is there no room for anything else?” So, I think all of my work comes from feeling overwhelmed by the world at large and just wanting to try to make something from it without having to conform to some predefined cultural norms.
That's also where the idea of economy comes in. What do you do with what you have? What can you do with the resources at your disposal? I started working in photography as a way to deal with feeling overwhelmed. I thought that if I could freeze myself for a moment, get my different parts to hold still long enough, I’d be able to really study them. At the same time, I hate this aspect of photography because it is so unreal and so unnatural.
Photography was a means of recording something or documenting it, but then what do you actually do with it once that moment has been documented?
More that it sucks the life out of it. So that while I'm trying to see something about my life, I'm looking at something dead. But it does at least keep it still long enough to really be able to look at the contours and the edges and all the details.
Did you first start experimenting with photography when you were young, when you were still living in the Midwest or did that develop later?
Yes, I started doing that at university. Because I ended up doing a double major, I had to have a certain number of other classes as well, and the easiest way was to do some art classes. So I did a theater practicum, I did dance, and I did photography.
Welcome/Welcome Back, 2021. Archival photographic pigment print, Canson Baryta, 315g, 96 x 96 cm each
Do you consider your work to be a means of self discovery in the sense that you’re examining or excavating different elements of your identity? And how that changes over time?
Yes, definitely. Probably because of childhood, I felt like I could blend in anywhere I needed to, but I wasn’t really sure who I was anymore. I think that's also related to what I was saying about feeling overwhelmed. When I moved to New York for my MFA… it was the ‘90s in New York! I mean, identity was everywhere in the art world. I felt like this small town girl coming into this big city which was fantastic. I loved the anonymity but I also started realizing that I really didn't have much of an idea of who I was. I was surrounded by people who seemed to know who they were and what they stood for. I felt so confused and ill-defined.
So that became the project Welcome. I thought, alright, let's try to nail this down a little bit. I experience voices inside that are like, “Hey, I want this,” or, “I have something to say.” There are different parts or personas that come out [in the work]. The ones that have the red curtain backgrounds are much more performative, about being in the world, how one presents. They're often more humorous, and the ones with the black background are much more introspective—more of what's going on inside. Those are certainly a lot darker.
When you were asking about where it all came from, I feel like I was always just trying to make some kind of excuse for existing, you know?
That plays into another observation that I made is that there is a duality or a process of transformation—a before and after—that you're going through in time, and your body is transforming. In your series The Suicides, you play twins that are pitted against each other—which is essentially pitting yourself against yourself.
Definitely. There is always a battle or reckoning going on, whether inside or with the world, and a lot of the work is addressing that.
The Suicides are a series of photo collages where I play twins, one always trying to kill the other in some absurd way: tiger attack, puncture by cannonball, drowning in liters of alcohol-permeated urine... I started them in 2003 and am still fiddling with them. They exist as illustrations currently but still have to be realized as small scale works on paper in a miniature painting-style.
That process of transformation you mention is the basis for the work Welcome/Welcome Back (1996/2011/2021). Fifteen years after I made the Welcome series, I found myself as a 40-something pregnant mom in Paris. I was curious to see what impact time, the implication of motherhood, and other circumstances had on my sense of identity. By imitating the original photographs as closely as possible, I wanted to record my bodily changes, but I especially wanted to see if I could capture the more nuanced and elusive psychological evolution. The resulting work consists of 32 life-size photographs–16 time-spanning portrait pairs exhibited side by side.
Loose Cannons (from The Suicides), 2003. Photo collage
What is your studio practice like? Are you regularly photographing things? Do you pull disparate things together and it becomes a project, or are you kind of working on multiple ideas in a fluid, organic way?
Definitely working on multiple things all the time. In the studio, I might be working on a text or editing when I feel the urge to give voice to a character that suddenly imposes itself or to give movement or otherwise embody a feeling or idea that’s troubling me. I think of these as video sketches. You know, as much as I have a problem with some aspects of how technology is used, I love the smartphone because I can just snap things all the time like we all do. I don't really think of that as the work; they're just collections of things. I have gazillions of collections of things because everything is material to me that may come into play at another time. So yes, there are tons of things going on at one time.
My practice is changing a bit now, or perhaps what I allow to be seen of it is going to be changing soon. Like I said, I have collections. I have these receipts from the 1990s through today that I am compiling together and making things from. There's this installation I call “Forest for the Trees,” which are vines made from plastic bags I braided together and exhibition cards from shows that I've seen. It’s a way of mapping what I've seen.
They hang in my space; I walk through it every single morning, and it's really, really obstructive. I have to go around it or I have to go through it. It’s a really simple concept, but it speaks to me symbolically because these are other artists who I absolutely adore and love, but at the same time, it gets in my way physically, and it gets in the way of my thinking. It also plays into the absurdity thing, right? We're all working really hard to get our work out there, to get it shown, and then you get it shown, and it's a big deal on an individual level. But then I'm looking at these—some of these magnificent shows—and they're just one little card on, you know, one little pin on one little vine. I call it “Forest for the Trees” because it's an homage to everybody, but they all—everybody—gets lost at the same time, so it’s also a kind of elegy.
That's a really interesting dichotomy! There’s the significance of it on one level, and then when you start to kind of shift the way you're looking at it, all of a sudden it becomes slightly nihilistic, like what's the point?
Yes, the existentialists are hugely important to me. The absurdity of all is underlying a lot of what I'm working on.
“Forest for the Trees” in Hansen’s studio
Are there any philosophers or artists that you've read a lot of or researched?
Samuel Beckett is always my go-to just because I love how he takes nothing, like shit, literally shit, and makes it into something that's—not exactly beautiful, not even particularly meaningful, but there's something. I admire the economy of his means: he takes uninviting or even repulsive characters in unappealing or barely definable settings and makes something so painfully human and transcendent from it all. I'm not giving the best rendition of Beckett here, but this is what he means to me.
Then there is Niki de Saint Phalle. I wrote my undergraduate thesis about her. The highly personal and joyful nature of her work really inspired me. A joyful or humorous quality is something I’m constantly cultivating.
I have a structuring device that I've made for myself consisting of three roles. One of them I call the Gilder: I'm trying to make everything shiny and bright. Then, there’s the Prankster: I poke fun and try to bring some joy to the absurdity of everything. And the last one is one that's probably coming in more recently. It's the least obvious, which I call the Protector—it might better be called the Empowerer. That again has everything to do with childhood and with this desire to help make a world where there's room for literally everybody to just be who they are. Because I get worried about what falls through the cracks.
That's a really strong point to make about the relationships between those, say, between the prankster and the idea of a safe space. If there isn't that capacity to just poke fun at something—which can be a really strong and necessary critique sometimes through humor—if that doesn't exist, then we end up further polarized.
My hope is that in approaching a serious subject with a bit of levity, it can make it easier to sit in discomfort, creating an opportunity for deeper consideration and more compassionate understanding.
You had mentioned the iPhone; is that primarily how you take pictures?
For the F UR A project, it’s mostly the iPhone, but I did bring in a friend to do some really hi-res photos and videos for F UR A as well. One is a building-size F UR A on the streets of Paris over a subway grate in the style of Marilyn Monroe. That one had to be higher resolution than an iPhone could give me. But generally speaking, they are on the phone, and they are meant to be part of that selfie culture, kind of documenting our lives.
F UR A Marilyn, Paris, 2022. Photo screen print on industrial mesh, 350 x 400 centimeters
Was there a moment where you were just like, ugh, like this is so frustrating, this is going to be a project now, or was it more of a slow build?
Almost everything starts with something that builds up, and I just can't take it anymore. It's very much an intuitive response that starts it, then things develop out from there.
I'm going to go backwards for a moment. The Welcome project started with the image, “Welcome.” I was feeling really frustrated trying to just be a woman, and was like, well, you know, fine, here I am, naked and holding a “welcome” sign. It was this kind of angry response that I envisioned as a pinup girl.
F UR A was very similar. I had resisted getting onto Instagram for years. I was hearing from a lot of other artists, “Oh, you really have to get on Instagram, blah, blah, blah—and this is what you have to do for the algorithm.” And I was like, oh my god, are you kidding me?
So somehow this 1988 house music song by S-Express, “Theme from S-Express,” came into my head and there's this lyric they've sampled from Karen Finley that goes, “Drop that ghetto blaster!” And instead of that, I hear in my head, “Fuck your algorithm!” So that's how it started. [Watch the F UR A video.]
F UR A in action at Art Basel, 2021. Guerrilla performance
I’m curious about what your general opinion and thoughts are about how artists are sort of expected to constantly be making content for this platform?
Well, personally, I find it terribly distracting and that it can too easily get in the way of making the work. I’m of the same mind as those other artists who feel like we’re being used as content providers. But I think that the younger generations are definitely much more fluid at doing it. There are some younger artists that I follow that I'm just amazed at how beautiful their posts are. Vanessa German is one.
Is F UR A continuing for a while?
Yes. It was supposed to move into what I call “phase two” a while ago, but I've been a little bit behind on the next phase, which is a series of DIY-style videos that are designed to build a revolution and get other people involved. There's also a third part which will be a kind of serial romance that will play out, probably on Instagram, That will then allow me to wrap it up and put an end to F UR A at least for me.
Going back briefly to the exhibition cards and the collections of receipts, are you planning to exhibit those or shape them into a new body of work, or are they more for visual inspiration in the studio?
That's a great question because I always treated them as just a collection—that's just how I am, that's my practice, and that's where it is. But I realized that I transform whatever place I am in; that installations seem to accumulate in situ wherever I am installed. When I was in New York, my bathroom became an installation with smaller works, sketches, objects (made, found or altered), text hair, etc.. Here, in Switzerland, it's my whole studio. It's slowly being transformed into a sort of rat’s nest made up of various collections of things.
Massaged/Massaged WB archival photographic pigment print, Canson Baryta, 315g 96 x 96 cm each 2021
Do you consider yourself an archiver? Do you organize your collections in any way?
I don't think of myself so much as an archiver, but I am a collector, and I use the collected materials. It's more to do, again, with this idea of economy. If something might have future use, whether that's a piece of ribbon from a package or a receipt or an envelope, then I've got it stashed aside somewhere. They are organized, in a way. The exhibition cards… it's a personal archive, if you will, and with the receipts as well.
I think of Spalding Gray; he was a performance artist and storyteller. He would just sit down at a table with his notebook and tell stories about his life. I thought of the receipts in this context. I was always amazed that I could pick up a receipt, look at the date, and remember that was this thing at this time for this reason. They’re telling a story.
It's also related to my mom. She passed away just after I moved to Switzerland, almost ten years ago. When she died, she left all these little notes on brochures, articles she’d ripped out, and other various pieces of paper. My mom had this very normal life. She didn't make much of an impression in the big, wide world, but she was really well loved in her circle. I was like, okay, really, that's it? What about these little things that she's so studiously kept, still in boxes?
I'm planning to make something with those as well. I’m interested in these traces that we leave behind and in particular, the traces of a very average life and what you can make from them. Because it's not meaningless or valueless, but it isn't going to make it into a history book or into the consciousness of the world at large.
That illustrates that connection back to you, as well, within the realm of personal narrative. I like the idea of a personal archive, where it might only mean something to you and no one else can really see unless you explain it to them. But there are ways that the ideas can be universal to other people. So if you're expressing, say, your mom's notes in some way, everyone is going to be able to understand that through their own personal references.
That is something that I think really hindered me for a long, long time. I was feeling like, oh my god, this is so personal. Who else can possibly care about this? And so it was really hard to put it out in the world because, you know, who cares? Whether I succeed or not probably depends on the project and presentation, but I’d like to hit that point where it's really speaking to experiences that we all share.
See more from Elizabeth Hansen:
photography • video • performance art
Originally from Northeast Wisconsin, Kate Mothes is an independent contemporary art writer and organizer based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
