But it’d be unfair to say she’s become an artist because of her bad experiences. As a kid, she was already very creative, and as an adult, the stream of ideas is still flowing as rich as ever. “There seems to be an infinite supply of ideas and energy inside of me, and trying to turn that into something of value is more of an urge than a decision,” she says in this interview.
Today, we introduce you to Alien Fashion, a collection of CGI-generated images that portray aliens in imaginary clothes. But Hansen escapes the anthropomorphic depiction many films have popularised; instead, she imagines abstract forms and shapes, making them hard to classify or even understand. “My goal was to create something as subtly foreign and unfamiliar as possible. The human body wouldn't have gotten me far there. So ‘they’ had to be something else – doesn’t matter what, just not human,” she explains. Below, we discuss trauma as a creative force, otherness, and Denis Villeneuve.