HANNAH IMHOFF, CONCEPTUAL ARTIST
ABOUT
Hannah Imhoff (*1997) is a conceptual artist who sometimes curates. Based between Vienna and London, her work focuses on how power relations are structured, negotiated and experienced within society.
Her practice creates spaces in which people do not merely understand social structures but encounter them — turning participation itself into a critical act.
She develops works that reveal the dynamics of social power while actively intervening in the processes through which they are reproduced. Drawing on a background in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, her practice explores questions of responsibility, equality and the forces that shape social organisation. These investigations are translated into spatial situations that invite active involvement rather than passive viewing, transforming audiences into co-participants in a dialogue where social realities become visible, questioned and renegotiable.
Imhoff’s work is included in the collections of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg and the DUMP Archive in London. She studied sculpture at the Mozarteum University Salzburg alongside her BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and completed her MA in Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Arts in London. Her professional experience in education politics, and at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK), across the areas of collection, education, and exhibition organisation, continues to inform her approach to institutional structures and curatorial practice. She is one fifth of the London-based Successful Artist collective and a member of EXTRA STARK, a fluid feminist network in Salzburg.
CV
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ARTIST STATEMENT
Activism, social science or conceptual art - whatever I did so far, it was always about the same thing: questioning human-made conditions we find ourselves in within society. While doing so, simplicity serves as the guiding principle of my ideas and aesthetics.
In my practise the concept determines the form and chooses the media. I take pre-exiting concepts from our social reality like cultural conditions, legal documents, societal norms, statistical descriptions or found footage. In order to find their suitable forms I am working cross-media, whereby I often end up doing installations, performative or documentary artworks. Here I am interested in a spatial fusion of art and society: I let my sculptures be formed by the visitors, meet through my performance with passersby, merge my cut-outs with the public space, nestle my graphs around house walls and draw my lines across streets. I like these artworks to be either small, easily packable or impermanent – as I am not very interested in resource-guzzling art that occupies storage spaces beyond my death.
What I am very interested in, is developing ideas. Normally, I circle around a theme till I get sudden access to the topic. This happens often while running or biking when my mind just starts bringing up ideas and concepts, commonly inspired by encounters with people or art that resonate with me. This leads then to this wonderful state of reaching constantly for pen and paper, to excited about the ideas my mind cannot stop creating.
My work is a dialog with society and art is my current language. I choose this language because I believe, that art has the ability to shape people’s fundamental perception: it touches us on another level, which is deeper than understanding something just with our mind. And that is what I am aiming for, especially by addressing human-made conditions we find ourselves in and that we can change.
ARTIST TALK
Photographic documentation by Anna* Marina Ernst of the artist talk for the Photography and New Media class at the Mozarteum University Salzburg.
Get in Touch
contact.imhoff(at)gmail.com
Studio
New Jörg
Jägerstraße 56
1200 Vienna
