Hannah Macfarlane

Hannah Macfarlane (b.1996) is a multidisciplinary artist focused on the tactile realm of wet felting. She explores curiosity, intimacy and vulnerability through unusual materials and her process of making. Hannah uses her art practice as a means of processing, healing and learning as she engages with her material by creating sculpted forms by combining hand-dyed fabric, stitching and felting by continuously rubbing wool with soap and warm water.

“The method of wet-felting is very tactile, time consuming, and physically vigorous. The continuous motions of rubbing, molding, and shocking the fibres of carefully placed and torn wool is a meditative yet exhausting practice. The wool slowly transforms – shrinking, growing, and fusing from its previous form to another, sometimes unexpected one. Through externalising the internal, the artworks come to represent the inner and outer body, our tangible connectors to experiencing the world…My focus is an acceptance of our human fragility and understanding the importance of gentle familiarity with what is seemingly uncomfortable. To handle with care is a daily choice and practice – acknowledging feeling, holding and relating to our experience of connection, and tending to the significance of the senses.”

View Hannah’s work in our Fresh Voices 2021 catalogue.

Macfarlane is a graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art. In 2021 she was part of Latitudes’ ArtistLab development programme and was selected for Guns & Rain’s Fresh Voices exhibition. In 2022 participated in African Galleries Now on Artsy, the Karoo National Arts Festival, and Art Joburg. She was also awarded a SAFFCA residency in the Eastern Cape. Her work sits in several international collections.