Jason Hendrik Hansma presents a series of photos (on the left) that he has taken during 2017 and 2020, as well as an essay When it Comes to Certain Songs - Aphasia, the Studio, Abstraction and Disability.
Jason Hendrik Hansma explores in his creation the in-between, the liminal, and the nearly articulate. He deals in his works with architectural, cultural and physical standards.
He is interested in the ways in which works are made outside of standardized norms. For him, 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 could slow down an exhibition's motion on providing a soft cut moved from a slight breeze from outside air…
In his 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.
Although he is a visual artist, Jason Hendrik Hansma is also involved in writing. In 2019, he wrote an essay in which he recounts how the past impacts his creation today:
"Aphasia moved suddenly and silently into my childhood, it was powerful, forceful and severe, leaving me unable to understand language, speak, write, read or talk. When I could speak, three or four slurred words would come out, but the effort to reach them was exhausting, If’s, and’s, the’s and that’s were removed entirely from my capacity, the ability to connect words together with objects abstracted from context was impossible. Without a direct reference to an object, I could not speak to it, everything that was not in front of me was an abstraction…"
- Excerpt from the essay When it Comes to Certain Songs
Aphasia, the Studio, Abstraction and Disability
Discover this essay in its entirety >> here <<
Jason Hendrik Hansma (Netherlands) is in residency at the Cité internationale des arts through the program of the Mondriaan Fonds .