Stephanie Hanna is a socially engaged artist based and born in Berlin. Through her emancipatory artistic practice, Stephanie questions the self-evidence of social habits. Often, she invites the participation of a previously unknown counterpart into her creative process. The process is the work, and it emerges situation-specifically, in unframed ways and everyday situations, finding its artistic forms in an expanding array of old and new media.
Stephanie studied stage and costume design at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee and at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht in the Netherlands (BA 2001).
She received the M.A. “Art in Context” at the Universität der Künste Berlin in 2006.
Between 2020 and 2024, she completed a professional training
in somatic movement pedagogy (with Susanne Kukies and team).
Her current embodied thinking research is based on the observation of how be(com)ing more aware of our bodies heightens our sense of connection to the world.
*
long-term art projects
2005–12 senior street art
In this the participative art project, Stephanie developed and facilitated workshops and participative actions around Graffiti, Street Art and Hip Hop for people older than 50 years, upon invitation of institutions such as Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Autostadt Wolfsburg, ibk kubia at Akademie Remscheid as well as in diverse cultural centers for senior citizen or youth in Kreuzberg. International media coverage in Die Zeit, art – das Kunstmagazin, de:bug, 3Sat / ZDF Kultur, IlSole24Ori weekend edition, Spiegel Online – international edition, Hemispheres – Blog and In-Flight Magazine of United Airlines, Seniorenratgeber / Apothekenrundschau, a French schoolbook to learn the German language (Edition Nathan), and many more.
The project was made possible through various funding and commissions, amongst others on an ongoing base by the Communal District of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg of Berlin (2006-11).
It was nominated for the “art.award” by “dieGesellschafter” (Aktion Mensch) in 2007.
2013-2015 The Wise and the Ways
Audio recordings of advice for a good life, collected in the streets of Berlin – Neukölln, Wedding and Marzahn, and in Görlitz. Shown in Haus am Kleistpark (collective / Tempelhofer Kunstpreis 2016), Zukunftsvisionen Festival Görlitz (2015, site-specific installation), Galerie M (Temporäre Kunstprojekte Marzahner Promenade, 2014), OKK (2013) and Labor: Urbanes Altern /48 Stunden Neukölln (2013 in a site-specific installation at Donau Ecke Ganghofer), and online (see title link).
The project was made possible through commissions and a residency in the “Art Lab” by Zukunftsvisionen Festival in Görlitz. It was nominated for the “Tempelhofer Kunstpreis” by Haus am Kleistpark, a communal gallery in Berlin Schöneberg in 2016.
2011-18 Donau Ecke Ganghofer
In a 80+ square meter window space of a running department store in Berlin – Neukölln, Stephanie realized unannounced performances and shifting installations, continuously in flux and strictly non-commercial, with every working stage equally visible for a broad audience of passer-bys, and poly-perspectives of art unfolding when walking by the see-through corner.
Next to developing her own practice site- and situation-specifically in several half-year long series of shiftings and other performative experimentation, she invited international visual and performing artists to develop and exhibit works in that corner window, with the soft curatorial proposal of shiftings and transitionings.
This work was awarded the “Inclusion Prize” by Kulturnetzwerk Neukölln in 2013 and the “Project Space Prize” by the Berlin Senate in 2017.
2017 ongoing depowering explorations / embodied thinking research