Hannah Thual

What is below the surface? A seemingly simple question, it is an ever-present consideration while making work. Thus the surface of things, the surface of people, the surface of judgement, are so many ways in which this question of surface might be posed. I have always been attracted by the diversity of the human subject and with it the question of why we construct ourselves so differently from each other. Certainly from the standpoint of the phenomenon of society, the mass of individualities is scattered and the essence of objects is dissolved. There is no limit to hold on to, but only paradoxes that baffle our expectations.

Are we conscious of the perpetual ambivalence between the expected and the unpredictable, the visible and the invisible, the permeable and the impenetrable? What do we offer for the other to see and what do we perform for the other to say? In turn are there walls that we build around ourselves and inside ourselves, what are they made of and why do we create them? Often grown as protective interfaces, the porous skin quickly becomes a suffocating beacon, an implement or means of imprisonment.

Throughout my practice, I explore artificial materials and endeavour to understand the nature of the separation between an exterior and an interior self, between illusion and the limits of visibility, between understanding and language. Using photography, various form of print and object making, my current work is researching the tensions and slippages between everyday life.