Jason Hendrik Hansma

  1. A person stands beside a magenta-purple painting, their hand pressing gold leaf onto a seam. The hand’s position suggests the act of repair or application. A section of the wall catches the flash, showing subtle texture and traces of previous handling. The person’s forearm bears tattoos partially visible against a dark sleeve.
  2. A worktable covered in plastic sheeting holds a brush with pale bristles, a small pencil, strips of paper flecked with gold, and scattered workshop tools. The light falls across the table unevenly, creating zones of warmth and shadow. Beneath the surface, parts of a floor and a case are just visible, indicating an installation in progress.
  3. Several sheets of paper are taped to a white wall with fluorescent strips of yellow, green, and red tape. The arrangement includes typed notes, sketches, and a small printed reproduction of a classical painting. Beneath them, a pale purple panel leans against the wall. A black cable and socket run along the right edge, suggesting a studio or workspace setting.
  4. A person stands beside a table covered in sheets of paper and coloured materials. Their hand holds a print containing two purple rectangular fields. Around them lie golden and violet papers, small black-and-white images, and transparent folders. Sunlight cuts across the table, catching the edges of the papers and the folds of the white shirt the person is wearing.
  5. A desk stands beneath tall windows through which late afternoon light enters the room. On the table lies an open notebook, a stack of papers, and a vase filled with bright flowers—red, pink, and orange stems rising unevenly. Shadows from the window frames fall across the surface, dividing it into geometric bands of light. Outside, the leaves of nearby trees catch the same sunlight, casting a soft green reflection onto the glass.
  6. A tall panel painted in purple is carried across a large room with high windows and theatre lighting overhead. The person’s back faces the camera as they move the structure toward a stage-like platform. Two additional panels lean against the wall, while the light from the windows outlines the scale of the interior space.
  7. A person leans beneath a purple panel, holding a small knife against its edge. Their arm, marked by tattoos of a snake and other figures, is caught in the flash. The person’s focus appears on a fine detail near the corner, possibly trimming or adjusting the panel’s surface.
  8. Plastic sheeting covers the floor of a room, where several bottles of purple paint have been placed. Some bottles stand upright, while one balances precariously on another. Near them, a roller and brush rest beside an open jar, spilling paint onto the surface below. The pigment pools and splatters across the plastic, mingling with faint reflections of light from the surrounding space.
  9. An array of LED panels fills the frame. Each unit, marked “MPLED,” connects through a lattice of black cables and orange connectors. A single metal pipe runs vertically through the centre, interrupting the near-symmetry of the modular grid. The light reveals the panels’ heat sinks, ridged and matte, forming a surface that reads as both mechanical and patterned.

Selected work

Jason Hendrik Hansma (b. 1988) works across film, sound, and installation. Drawing on theories of the pre-linguistic, the liminal, and the slur, he constructs encounters at the threshold of articulation, where recognition precedes naming.

Hansma builds his work through long-term research methods that integrate archival material, philosophy, language development, and digital culture. Working with small interdisciplinary teams, he creates formal systems that extend into film, spatial installations, and multi-channel sound environments. These works circulate across festivals, museums, galleries, and clubs, and are realised as touring and reconfigurable spatial systems, bringing diverse audiences into shared conditions of attention and perception.

His work has been presented at the Grand Palais, UNESCO, Bauhaus Dessau, Eye Filmmuseum, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, and featured in publications including Artforum, Frieze, Vogue, and NSS Magazine. His films have been screened as an address at the European Parliament and the World Economic Forum.

Hansma is co-director of Shimmer, a curatorial and production platform developed with curator Eloise Sweetman. Operating as both a programme and a long-term cultural infrastructure, Shimmer produces exhibitions, commissions, and public programmes that foreground encounter, transmission, and sustained forms of public life. It operates as a network for collaboration, distribution, and audience development, and has realised projects with over 220 artists, including Ellen Gallagher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Lawrence Weiner. Hansma regularly writes on the ethics and methodology of curating through the lens of an artist.

Alongside his artistic practice, Hansma has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and the University of Amsterdam, and currently serves as an advisor to the Mondriaan Fonds.

He lives and works in Berlin and Rotterdam.

Recent texts/books

  • Nocturnalities –
    Published by Jesse Presse and Onomatopee Projects, 2025

    Download Here

  • In Our Real Life
    New book of photography and essays, published by Shimmer Press 2024

  • Say it Right
    published by the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut, research fellowship project, 2022

    Download Here

  • The Voice that Remains – PUBLICS Helsinki
    Published by Lugemik & PUBLICS, 2024

    Download Here

  • When it Comes to Certain Songs, Aphasia, the Studio, Abstraction and Disability.
    With annotations by Élisabeth Lebovici, Joseph Grigely, and Gordon Hall, 2019

    Download Here

  • A Centre Cannot Hold
    New publication with a text by Jo-ey Tang, 2020

    Download Here

Forthcoming/Recent

  • 2019
    Reading and panel discussion at De Appel, Amsterdam
  • 2019
    Reading by Kris Dittel at De Appel for Amsterdam Art Weekend
  • 2019
    ‘When it Comes to Certain Rooms’ La Maison Van Doesburg, Paris
  • 2019
    De l’île au monde, Centre international d’art et du paysage Île de Vassivière
  • 2019
    Il est une fois dans l’Ouest, Frac Aquitaine – La MECA, Bordeaux
  • 2019
    State of Transparency, Looiersgracht 60 Amsterdam
  • 2019
    LW/LW with Louwrien Wijers and Lawrence Weiner at Shimmer (curator)
  • 2019
    Residency and exhibition at La Maison Van Doesburg, Paris
  • 2019
    Exhibition at Videotage and Art Basel, Hong Kong