Tanja Nis-Hansen

Tanja Nis-Hansen (born in 1988, Denmark) lives and works in Berlin. She studied in Copenhagen and Vienna before achieving both her BFA (2016) and MFA (2018) at the Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg under the supervision of professor Jutta Koether.

Working between the mediums of painting, text, and performance, takes as her subject the body’s presence amid contemporary capitalism - anxious, waiting, resting, ill or non-functioning. Her semi-autobiographical works, which explore motifs including waiting rooms, spiral staircases, moments of rest, and text statements, invite the viewer to think about female labor, exhaustion, illness, bodily maintenance, heritage, and the environment. Perceptible throughout Nis-Hansen’s stylistically diverse oeuvre is an abiding curiosity about the history of painting and the social construction of hierarchies of taste. The artist evinces a fascination for theater and stage design, which in her paintings surfaces not only through the inner logic of space on the canvas, but also through an all over “theatrical” mode of representation.

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Tanja Nis-Hansen has had solo exhibitions at Galerie im Turm, Berlin (with Yen Chun Lin) (2024); Solito - Galleria S2 (2023); palace enterprise, Copenhagen (2023); Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon, Videbæk (2022); Sans titre, Paris (2022 and 2019); Udstillingsstedet Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen (2019); HfBK, Hamburg (2018); Come Over chez Malik’s, Hamburg (2017). In 2025, the artist will have two solo shows at Kasseler Kunstverein Museen, Kassel and Sans titre, Paris.

Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at ICAT – HFBK Hamburg (2024); OTP Copenhagen (2024); Harkawik, New York (2024); Condo at Union Pacific, London (2024); Mécènes du Sud, Montpellier (2023); Belenius, Stockholm (2023); Rundetårn, Copenhagen (2022); Sans titre, Paris (2022 & 2019); June, Berlin (2022); L’INCONNUE, New York (2021); SORT, Vienna (2019); Crum Heaven, Stockholm (2019); Sans titre, Paris (2019); AEDT, Düsseldorf (2019); Rumpelstiltskin, New York (2018); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2018); Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan (2018); Munchener Kammerspiele, Munich (2018); Der Tank, Institut Kunst HGK FHNW, Basel (2018); Halle für Kunst Lüneburg (2017); Galerie der HfBK, Hamburg (2016); Godsbanen, Aarhus (2015) and Parallel Vienna, Vienna (2014).

The artist was awarded the Neue Kunst Hamburg grant with Niclas Riepshoff (with whom she forms the duo CONNY) and a grant by the Danish Art Council in 2019, after being nominated for the Hamburger Arbeitsstipendium, the Hiscox Kunstpreis and the Schues Nachwuchsförderung all in 2018.

Tanja Nis-Hansen’s works are featured in the permanent collection of the Danish Arts Foundation and the New Carlsberg Foundation.