Images of cityscapes, houses, churches, apartment blocs and office towers proliferate in the work of Jason Hendrik Hansma. Working in a variety of media, including photography, video and installation, his work seems to reveal, at least on a superficial examination, a deep-seated fascination with the built environment. However, it is not architecture that concerns Hansma, so much as habitation. The sense of a home, both in its presence and its absence, figures centrally in his practice. Born in Pakistan, raised between Thailand and the Netherlands, and now a resident of Australia, the artist’s peripatetic existence has profoundly influenced his work. This is manifested in a deep absorption in ideas of community, commonality and belonging and, inevitably, with the antithesis of these things: dislocation, distance and isolation.

Moving, the abandonment of one home and the establishment of another, is a repeated theme. The process of negotiation that occurs in every “rehousing”, the manner in which people resettle and alter their environment to fashion not only a dwelling, but a sense of a home is of particular concern in Hansma’s work. His installation piece – involved the distribution of pre-fabricated housing frames to destitute families living on the streets of Bangkok and the documenting of the gradual construction of their homes from scavenged materials. The shape of the housing frames was based on the design of Dutch roof-frames.

Minimalism in Hansma’s work is not an aesthetic pose, but, rather, it is simply the most precise means of expression: a kernel of emotional truth shorn of all extraneous detail. His practice involves a great deal of editing and refining. Beginning with a vast volume of accumulated images, Hansma pares back until he reveals the essential.

www.jasonhansma.com