Anna Hackman

A Ceramic Artist, Master of Arts
Anna Hackman is a Finnish ceramist. She graduated from The University of Art and Design (nowadays The Aalto University) in 1989. Hackman has also studied abroad, for example in Toscana in Italy for the legendary ceramist Marcello Fantoni.

Anna Hackman has been exhibiting in several group and private exhibitions, like at The Arabia Museum Gallery and The Design Museum in Helsinki as well as at the leading Galleries of Helsinki. In 2016 she exhibited at the Wiurila Manor Summer Exhibition. She has also had exhibitions abroad, in The Netherlands and Japan. Her works are listed in many private and public collections, Pro Artibus, the Arabia Museum and KWUM to name a few.

Anna Hackman’s production is very broad. She originally fell in love with the versatility and endless possibilities of the material. She has been using all the classic techniques from building and throwing to casting. Lately she has swifted from stoneware to porcelain but is making ceramic sculpture and reliefs in both. She draws inspiration from nature and it’s organic forms as well as the archipelago and the sea. She has also created meaningful still lives on the vanitas theme and her newest series deal with issues of climate change and the impact that man has on nature. Hackman creates spectacularly beautiful works from plastic waste, devastation and death.

The space in between

The viewer is invited to see an alternative perspective that is not a visible one but merely one of the mind. The physical offers one perspective but there is one that isn´t directly apparent to the eye - that is the space in between that also forms a shape within the physical shape.

By exposing the space that is created inside of the shapes one gets a notion of another shape within the object thus suggesting a connection between the physical and the non-physical worlds.

As the chinese philosopher Lao Tse put it:”In the empty space that is within the jar lies its true potential.”

Anna Hackman has with her works from the last three decades made Finland a more beautiful place. As with all good art, it reflects its time and surroundings. Her sculpture not only offers beauty, but engages in contemplation and philosophy. Anna Hackman’s production offers us a glimpse of our own time and its changes.

Pia Maria Montonen