Early Life and Artistic Training

Antwerp, Belgium, 1960. This is where the trajectory of Karin Hanssen begins. The city provides the backdrop for her early years, a setting that would later inform her deep engagement with Belgian visual culture. She moves into formal training with a focus on the fundamentals of the craft, entering the studios of the AP University College Antwerp (KAA) to study drawing and painting.

The focus shifts toward the Higher Institute (HISK). Here, the technical rigor of her education takes shape. She navigates the complexities of the medium, refining a practice that relies on the tension between the observed and the reconstructed. By 1993, Hanssen completes her studies at HISK, emerging from the institution with a degree that marks the end of her formal academic training and the beginning of a career defined by a specific, analytical approach to the image.

Technique and Artistic Style

The canvas functions as a site of recycling. Hanssen builds her compositions from photographic and film material sourced from the 1950s and 1960s. This process operates as a visual flashback, pulling fragments of the past into the present. She frequently integrates art-historical references, weaving them into the fabric of the work. The resulting images possess a strange duality: they feel immediately recognizable, yet they remain entirely anonymous. Because the provenance of the original source material is lost, the subjects exist in a state of permanent displacement.

A neutral painting style defines the execution. This approach strips away the specificity of the subject matter. Characters within the scenes defy identification, their features rendered without the markers of individual identity. Landscapes undergo a similar process of generalization. They lose their particular geography to become indeterminate settings. This lack of detail prevents the viewer from pinning the scene to a specific moment or place, leaving only the sensation of a memory that has been partially erased.

Academic Research and Writing

The intersection of visual practice and scholarly inquiry defines much of her intellectual output. In 2016, she completed a PhD at the University of Antwerp, producing the work titled De Geleende Blik - in dialoog met de tijd. This research examines the mechanics of the flashback through the lens of appropriation, specifically focusing on how photographic images are repurposed within the medium of painting.

Her written investigations often target the complexities of the gaze. She has produced an essay exploring the appropriation of photographic images and the specific ways the image of women is appropriated in painting. This analytical focus extends into the moving image; in 2013, she produced the documentary film In dialogue with Luc Tuymans, which examines the concept of looking back in time through the lens of a specific artistic practice.

Exhibitions and Activism

Her presence in the international circuit spans continents and diverse institutional settings. She has exhibited at SMAK Ghent and the MAS Museum Antwerp. The reach of her work extends to the 7th Sharjah Biennial and the 2nd Yokohama Triennial. In the United States, her work appeared at the Chelsea Art Museum New York. Her exhibition history also includes the TAFA gallery in Tianjin, China, as well as the Kunstverein Ahlen in Germany, New Art Gallery Walsall, and the Canberra Contemporary Art Space in Australia.

Beyond the gallery walls, her work takes the form of social engagement. In 2011, she launched Contemporary Women Artists in Belgium. This online database and agenda functions as a tool to promote and visualize professional female visual artists working in Belgium. Through this initiative, she moves from the act of looking back to the act of making visible.