Interview: Hannah Witner
Hannah Witner is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist, designer, and art director whose work explores the fluid boundaries between the body, environment, and technology. Born in Charlotte, NC, she earned her BFA from Parsons School for Design and has since developed a practice that spans oil painting, airbrush painting, fiber arts, ceramics, digital media, printmaking, and illustration. Her work evokes the disorienting logic of a fever dream, using biomorphic forms and surreal landscapes to challenge perceptions of identity, femininity, and otherness.
She has participated in artist residencies in Hungary, Portugal, France, Serbia, Switzerland, and Iceland. Alongside her studio practice, she works as an art director, bringing a refined sense of visual storytelling and conceptual depth to her work. Deeply engaged in artist communities around NYC, she is committed to fostering dialogue around the ways digital culture, transformation, and embodiment shape contemporary identity.
Read our interview with Hannah below!
Installation view at the Other Art Fair, Brookylyn, 2024
PP: Walk us through a typical day in your studio or generally through your process to make new work.
HW: I usually make art in the evening and night. This is because I have a day job during the week, but even on weekends I usually like to start art towards the late afternoon. I’m just more of a night owl, when it’s quiet and there aren’t distractions of all the things I could go and do outside while looking at the sun. I usually work best in longer, focused sessions, so I usually block out at least 5 hours at a time to work, so I can get as much time as possible in the flow state. I almost always listen to podcasts, YouTube documentaries, or long history essays. Usually I work very intuitively, and work on many projects at once. During the time that I’m not making art, I’ll be thinking about where to push something next - sometimes things need time to cook!
Untitled, Airbrush on canvas, 20 × 24 inches, 2024
Untitled, Airbrush on paper, 18 × 24 inches, 2024
PP: What motivates you to make art?
HW: It’s almost like a compulsion—I don’t feel fully myself if I’m not making something. Art is how I process the world, how I understand my own experiences, and how I communicate things that feel beyond words. There’s something other-worldly about it that I can never explain! Existence itself is fluid and unknown - creating is a way to take control of my time, energy, focus, and sense of self to learn about processes, possibilities, and think about things that I haven’t thought before. I am drawn to making because it is one of the only ways to hold onto something fleeting. The act of creating feels like grasping at the ineffable, trying to pin down the sensation of being alive before it slips through my fingers.
PP: What role do you think artists have in society today? What role should they have?
HW: Artists have always been the ones who see through the cracks—who pull at the edges of reality, distort it, reframe it, and reveal what’s usually left unseen with a unique voice. We create spaces for ambiguity in a time that demands certainty. We reflect the subconscious of a culture, absorbing its anxieties, desires, and contradictions, and translating them into something tangible to understand within the chaos.
As for what role artists should have—I don’t think there’s just one. Some artists should provoke, some should soothe, some should document, some should dream. This is all part of the artists’ role - to have a unique perspective and voice apart from everyone else. At the core, they should remind us that things can change, that perception is fluid, that there are always other ways of being.
Riso works in progress
Ceramic works in progress
PP: Name a childhood toy (or memory/cultural reference) you had, that you think relates to your practice today.
HW: I can see how the Nintendo DS, Lite Brite, and Pixter shaped the way I engage with interactive, playful, and vibrant design today. Lite Brite, with its ability to create glowing images, was an early introduction to color theory and how light and contrast can transform an image - somewhat “digitally.” The Nintendo DS was a cultural moment in technology that I still reference today - it was an introduction into immersive game world-building. The Pixter was a weird pre-pre-ipad mixed with etch-a-sketch drawing tool I had.
PP: Favorite hobby outside of art?
HW: I love thrifting, dumpster diving, and finding weird objects on the street. It feels like uncovering hidden stories and forgotten treasures - and can often give me ideas if there are materials I can use. It gives me a way to step away from my work and think about objects differently. NYC has such a plethora of strange things to see and find - I love seeing relics of the past, a peak into someone else’s life, something I’ve been looking for, or something just plain weird. It’s exciting.
To learn more about Hannah’s work, see her Instagram and Website