Bio

Elizabeth Hansen was born in 1968 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, and spent her childhood in a conservative agricultural small town. After 20 years in New York and Paris, she now lives in a village in Switzerland, halfway between Geneva and Lausanne, halfway between the lake and mountains.

After an undergraduate degree in Art History and Economics and a brief career in arts administration followed by an apprenticeship as a photographer’s assistant, she received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Like the neat, but ultimately overly-simplistic models that troubled her during her early studies in economics, the cultural norms that we use to define and structure our daily existence bother Elizabeth Hansen. Whether she is considering gender roles, the institution of marriage, the problematics of ownership, ideas of heaven, or the use of algorithms on social media, Hansen brings an irreverent regard to the subject. Through a playful approach, her aim is to provoke serious evaluation of the status quo.

Her work is multi-disciplinary incorporating performance, installation, video, sculpture, and photography. It has been exhibited in New York, Belgium, and France and is in private collections in Belgium, France, Italy, and the United States.