Hansen has loved games, specifically video games, ever since she was a little kid. That love has
evolved into contemplation of their place in the art world as Hansen grew to be an artist herself. Other
than museums collecting original games and consoles, there are few examples of the artistic
merit of video game development in art institutions. Hansen firmly believes that video games have a
place in a larger art history and deserve to be analyzed alongside other art traditions. Having a
background in photography, Hansen began to explore how the two histories can inform each other. As
an artist, she set out to make work that she does not see in museums and galleries; art that challenges
the viewer’s expectations of what can be seen and valued in an institutional setting. Hansen sets out to
create work that thrives in ambiguity and oscillates between genres and realms.
"I recreate photographs as tintypes from my personal archive, which are rooted in formative moments in my life. The tintypes depict memories such as my childhood home, my best friend and I’s favorite place, and a trash beach in Brooklyn that became the focus of my thesis in college. While the tintypes are familiar scenes to me, they do not depict places that literally exist in the world. Each image is from a digital collage 'hand-stitched' in Photoshop that sources imagery from four different video games. Each new landscape that I make does not represent a scene that exists in the original video games, real life, or any other form. While my formative moments are often rooted in trauma, I reclaim these memories by expressing them through a new lens. This lens being video games, a medium that helped me escape into narrative-rich stories when I was otherwise very isolated."
