Hannah Epstein (AKA Hanski) is a contemporary artist whose practice constructs expanded cinematic environments through the collision of folkloric tradition, cultural critique, and AI image systems. Working across textile, installation, animation, projection, video games, and generative media, Epstein creates immersive narrative worlds where handcrafted objects and synthetic imagery coexist in unstable states of transformation.
Raised in Nova Scotia by three generations of Latvian women, Epstein embodies a layered cultural hybridity—half Latvian, half Jewish—that resists fixed identity and singular narratives. This sense of fragmented inheritance informs a practice deeply concerned with mediation, mythmaking, and the construction of reality through images.
Captivated early by the glowing spectacle of American television and the slow-loading dreamworlds of Internet 1.0 desktops, Epstein experienced media as both psychic escape and environmental force. These formative encounters continue to shape her work, which treats contemporary image culture not simply as representation, but as a total atmosphere capable of reorganizing memory, desire, and social life.
Holding a BA in Folklore from Memorial University and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon, Epstein bridges ancestral storytelling systems with speculative technological futures. Her work combines tactile processes such as rug hooking and soft sculpture with AI-generated animation, projection mapping, game aesthetics, and digitally networked forms of narrative. In the early 2010s, Epstein played a pioneering role in the women-in-games movement, advocating for expanded understandings of gameplay, embodiment, and authorship within digital space.
Her recent installations transform galleries into immersive cinematic ecosystems populated by large-scale textile figures, projected AI animations, found materials, and sculptural architectures. These environments blur the boundaries between cinema, sculpture, and simulation, positioning the viewer inside living image systems rather than in front of static works. Through plush surfaces and recursive visual loops, Epstein explores how contemporary consciousness is shaped by algorithmic media and the collapse between virtual and physical realities.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and featured in publications including the LA Times, CBC Arts, Hyperallergic, Architectural Digest, and Juxtapoz Magazine.