HANA

The Animal Within the Animal  by Ana Maria Farina and Hanna Washburn

These works were born from a collaboration with artist Hanna Washburn as a vibrant visual conversation that shares the many ways our practices intertwine.  We are both mothers and artists working primarily with repurposed fibers and textiles and using materials associated with the home and femininity to communicate the power and expansiveness of the body. Our distinct visual styles meld to create a collaborative tale, narrating complex corporeal joys and burdens. The works fuse imagery of the body with creatures, highlighting the mammal inside each of us. Plush, comforting textures and familiar domestic patterns come together to create hybrid forms, simultaneously maternal, familiar, and uncanny. Play is key to this collaboration—exploration and humor exist alongside the weightiness of the subject matter. We have pieced together these works from many disparate parts, speaking to our fragmented, layered identities, and the stitching and weaving brings visual and functional order to chaos. The bodies we create are free to be concurrently nurturing, seductive, strange, and distinctly autonomous.