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.