Student spotlight: Hannah Keats’ invasive installations
FSU Art MFA candidate (’25) Hannah Keats installed invasive installations as part of Professor Tra Bouscaren‘s ART 3380C Experimental Drawing class. This course explores a variety of approaches to drawing using a wide range of media, materials, and strategies. Keats approaches the class by exploring how space can be manipulated through multimedia invasive spatial interventions. By combining digital techniques, such as textile design and digital printing with installation work, she engages the space in a way that confronts the viewer and makes them question the complex issues posed by invasive species and human intervention.
Keats first work in experimental drawing is an installation created in FSU’s ATL Building. The installation utilizes wallpaper she designed and digitally printed, juxtaposed on a vending machine found in the building. The piece is slowly growing and Keats plans for it to take up more space in the future as she adds elements to it. Keats made the decision to place it on the side of a Coca-Cola machine, because Coke is a human invention and the litter and overconsumption produced by it speak to the invasive nature of her work. Speaking of the installation Keats says “Nothing makes me happier than a crisp Coke on a hot day, but what are the ecological problems that we have created through waste and technology?”
Through oil painting, digital media, and installation work, Keats explores the complex nature of invasive species and how they change the environments they exist in. No part of nature is untouched by humans and Invasive species are an example of how humans have intervened in spaces and created ecological problems, but there may be some benefits to invasive species long term as well as negatives. By using invasive species as the starting point for her research Keats get into the nuances of how complicated human intervention on the environment is and how there is no clear answer for how we can fix the ecological problems that we’ve created.