Viewing Room

Thursday, 07 March 2024

Nanna Hänninen

Nanna Hänninen

Joshua Tree in Super Bloom #1, 2024
Archival pigment print, acrylic paint
55 x 84 cm  

Nanna Hänninen focuses on environmental issues affecting global communities, warning of a rapidly approaching future. In her newest series Painted Desert, she travels through Joshua Tree National Park and Monument Valley, deliberately choosing locations most affected by drought. Through her documentation of these natural surroundings, she reflects on our relationship with landscape and nature.
Her process begins with black-and-white photographs that vividly capture the stark impacts of climate change on desert landscapes. By staining the prints and intervening with paint, she transforms the original images, creating a deeply personal response to a collective reality. Her painterly interventions breathe life and color back into the drought-stricken deserts, restoring to these landscapes what has been lost and symbolizing the fragility of these endangered environments as human presence encroaches upon them.