Hannah Rowan

Hannah Rowan’s work explores the slippery complexities of water that draws together a liquid relationship between the human body and geological and ecological systems. She uses a range of media including sculpture, installation, performance, sound and video to explore the uncertain form of materials. She is interested in exploring notions of bodies of water, vessels, animacy of matter and the temporal transformation of materials. She is informed by situated, embodied and submerged field research, from the Atacama Desert to the High Arctic, to learn from aquatic systems and with the animacy of the more-than-human world.

Rowan is influenced by Hydrofeminist theory as a means for representing the interconnections of ecological systems, to chart the movement of water from the liveness of melting ice, across weather systems and within bodily fluids like sweat. She develops ephemeral, alchemical and transformative pieces to evoke fragility and transience amidst the fluidity of materials. She uses materials that trace the passing of time to transmute into other forms, to explore scale, intimacy and loss. Ice, salt, glass, copper, clay and organic matter melt, burn, leak, dissolve, take root, oxidase, congeal and crystallise in transformative interactions where phases between matter becomes slippery, porous and in flux.

Her work reflects on what it means to be intimately connected as Bodies of Water, layering a post-human feminist perspective on material science, embodiment and ecological collapse to challenge Anthropocentrism.