Hannah Claus (born February 7, 1969) is a multidisciplinary visual artist of English and Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) ancestries and is a member of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation.
Claus' installations produce sensory environments that highlight time, place, and elements and her artwork explores the complexities of themes such as community, identity, modernization, and relationships.
Biography
Hannah Claus (Kanien'kehá:ka and English heritage) was born on February 7, 1969, in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada and is a member of Kenhtè:ke [Tyendinaga, Mohawk of the Bay of Quinte].[1][2] She lived with her family (parents, 2 brothers and a sister) in Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick. Claus moved to Ottawa, Ontario in 1988, completing a B.A. Honours in English Literature from the University of Ottawa (1988-1992); and then to Toronto in 1993, where she enrolled in the Visual Arts programme at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD). She graduated with honours from OCAD in 1997. In 2001, Claus moved to Montreal, Quebec, to complete her Master of Fine Arts at Concordia University (2001-2004). She continues to live and work in Tiohtià:ke, Kanien’kehá:ka territory, with her common-law partner and two children.[3][4]
Concurrent with her artistic practice, Claus has always been actively involved in local artistic communities. While in Toronto, she was a working member of the board of the artist-run centre, A-Space (1998-2001); and in Montreal, Centre d’art Optica (2005-2007). She was on the board of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective, an Indigenous-led non-profit organization that supports Indigenous curators, from 2013 to 2018, serving as vice-president from 2015-2017.[5] She left in 2018 to take on new responsibilities as a board member of the Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM), where she led the formation of the Indigenous Arts Committee, the hiring of the Indigenous arts project officer and the creation of Indigenous arts programming for CAM. She continues to serve as the liaison between the Board and the Indigenous Arts Committee. In 2019, Claus co-founded daphne, the first Indigenous-led artist-run centre of Tiohtià:ke, with fellow artists, Skawennati, Nadia Myre and Caroline Monnet. She remains an active member of the board.
Professionally, Claus was hired as artistic director of Axenéo7, an artist-run centre in Gatineau QC in 2007 and commuted weekly between Montreal and Ottawa/Gatineau. She left this position in 2009 and taught contemporary Indigenous art as an adjunct professor/part-time instructor at Concordia University (2009-2011) and McGill University (2011-2012); and also as a sessional lecturer at Institut Kiuna College in Odanak, Quebec (2012-2020).[6][7] In 2020, Claus was hired for a full-time position as Assistant Professor, Frameworks and Interventions in Studio Art Practices, in the Department of Studio Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. Throughout this time, since 1999, Claus has been working as a professional artist, exhibiting her installations throughout Canada, in the United States, Europe and New Zealand.
Education
Hannah Claus obtained her Associate's degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design with Honors in Toronto, Canada 1997. During a presentation for her "trade-treaty-territory" exhibition, Claus stated she studied both drawing and painting as well as sculpture. She has expressed her rejection of how art school only emphasizes concepts and ideas, not so much beauty. Still desiring the "aesthetic appeal of painting," she chose installation art as her practice instead. Claus went on to pursue her Masters of Fine Arts in Studio Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 2004.
Selected works
"Cloudscape" (2012)