Jason Hendrik Hansma’s (b.1988) work explores the in-between, the liminal, and the nearly articulate. Drawing from a wide range of references and materials, Hansma’s work deals with standards, architectural, cultural, and physical, along with how works are made outside of standardized norms. For Hansma, a photograph might be created over months, an entire exhibition might happen in ‘transitional spaces’ such as hallways, doorways, or window sills. A hand-stitched curtain slows down an exhibition’s motion, providing a soft cut moved by a slight breeze from outside air or a film focuses on the moment a wave crashes into architecture. Amateur videos of embers recorded from bushfires are cut to chopped and screwed, and textiles from the artist’s ancestors are refolded and formed into new painterly landscapes.In the work, language (and the loss of language) plays a key role in moving through the politics of aesthetics to reconsider the means we use to locate ourselves through and with each other.
Jason was born in Lahore Pakistan, in 1988, completed a Master of Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute, and was a participant at the Jan van Eyck.
Exhibitions, performances, readings, and screenings have been included at UNESCO, Bauhaus, Dessau, Maison van Doesburg, KADIST, Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, Art Basel Hong Kong’s Satellite Program, Eye Filmmuseum, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius, Centre Georges Pompidou, Parc Saint-Léger Centre d’art Contemporain, Hordaland Kunstsenter, Centre International d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière, Center For Contemporary Art Futura, Jan van Eyck and De Appel among others.
Jason Hendrik Hansma has been a tutor at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, the Masters Program at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK), Masters of Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam, and was a Rietveld/Sandberg research fellow.
Jason is co-director of Shimmer (along with curator Eloise Sweetman), an exhibition space in the shipping port of Rotterdam. Shimmer has collaborated with and shown over 120 practices such as stanley brouwn, Raqs Media Collective, Ellen Gallagher, Charlotte Posenenske, Theo van Doesburg, Marcel Duchamp, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, PUBLICS, Sarah Rifky, Lawrence Weiner and Louwrien Wijers, amongst others.
Jason has lived and worked in Paris, Berlin, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Amsterdam and currently lives and works in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
