Hana Lara Lait works with photography, performance and installation, focusing her practice on representing mental and emotional states.

Living with bipolar disorder has influenced and driven her most recent works. She resists stereotypical representations of mental illness. Avoiding the use of culturally agreed signifiers of mental illness, she makes emotive work that a non-sufferer can relate to- changing feelings of fear into understanding.

Performance is essential to her work; allowing to physically expel the uncertainty and flux of the illness. Performing to camera, she constructs images. Using black and white chemical photography,  she exploit the attributes and behaviour of that medium to become a part of the performance. This builds in to forms of presentation that make immaterial emotions and ethereal moods in to something physical.

Hana recently completed her Masters Degree in Creative Practice at Leeds Arts University. She has curated independent art shows in Leeds and recently exhibited video art in Brooklyn, NY for SXRVXVE.

Hana on Beyond Photography: Beyond Photography means looking beyond the selfie, the family photograph, or the beautiful landscape. People tend to think that a photograph speaks a thousand words, but this is often not the truth. It will never tell you what is really going on behind the image, it will only show you what the image-taker wants to be seen. The medium of photography has so many rules that are often followed and never broken, but I love breaking the rules. By breaking the rules of photography I can use it go beyond what is expected of it and show that which cannot be seen. I can create new realities, new personas and generate emotions and reactions that were not expected.