Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Hanna Jo notable solo exhibition is 《Persona》 at Raum6, Stuttgart (2023).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Jo has  also participated in various group exhibitions, including 《Young Korean Artists 2025: Here and Now》 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, 2025), 《Land of Origins》 (P21, Seoul, 2025), 《Exoskeleton》 (P21, Seoul, 2024), 《Keine schlafenden Hunde wecken》 (Wagenhallen, Stuttgart, 2024), 《Youth Sanctuary》 (Joseph Konsum, Leipzig, 2023), 《Rundgang》 (ABK, Stuttgart, 2022), 《Süsse Stückchen》(im Kunstverein, Böblingen, 2022), among others. 

Originality & Identity

Hanna Jo is a painter based in Germany. In her early practice, she explored the human body through an anatomical lens by referencing portraits from art history, delving into the essence of the human form. Her early work, such as Weihnachtsmarkt (2022), sensitively captured facial expressions and gestures, reflecting the relationship between individuals and their environments, and conveying the emotional flux and social atmosphere embedded in everyday moments.

However, after experiencing the pandemic in Germany and directly confronting biases based on race, gender, and appearance, Jo began to shift toward neutralized, depersonalized figures that remove external features. She adopted anatomy as a symbolic language that reveals what lies beneath the “surface,” raising questions about the universality and equality of human existence. In her practice, anatomy functions not merely as a biological structure, but as a visual tool for revealing the common internal framework of all human beings.

Works like Mass_series No.7 (2023) eliminate markers of external identity to present recomposed bodies that reflect the biological equality and emotional core of human existence. Over time, Jo expanded her imagination to connect the internal structures of the body with natural topographies, constructing painterly spaces that interweave bodily cross-sections with earth layers and plant root systems.

In her two-person exhibition 《Land of Origins》 (P21, 2025) with Chunkook Lee, she introduced hybrid organisms composed of roots, microbes, and organs, articulating a worldview where the human and natural, interior and exterior, are entangled. At the group exhibition 《Young Korean Artists 2025》 at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, she further advanced these ideas through bold and experimental formal expressions.

Style & Contents

Hanna Jo’s recent works depict microscopic realms in which organic elements such as bodily interiors, plant roots, muscle fibers, fungi, and microbes intertwine. Her paintings resemble magnified views seen through a microscope, merging anatomical, botanical, and mechanical forms to construct a sensory yet conceptual visual language.

She applies thick layers of acrylic and medium on canvas or MDF panels, then uses soldering irons, rags, and sharp tools to scrape and carve into the surface. This painterly and sculptural approach treats the canvas as if it were flesh, creating a dynamic surface that simulates anatomical dissection and recomposition. Untitled (2024) exemplifies the refined execution of this technique.

While her early paintings retained external human features, they already hinted at internal movement and dissolution. In the 《Young Korean Artists 2025》 exhibition, she introduced hybrid life forms that blend microorganisms, plant life, and bodily fragments, blurring the boundaries of form.

Notably, Jo often incorporates the image of the “eye” into these figures, anthropomorphizing them and imbuing them with identity and emotion. In works such as Portrait_series No.7 (2023) and Untitled (2025), the eye functions as a device that generates a tension between strangeness and familiarity, offering viewers a point of emotional entry.

Topography & Continuity

Hanna Jo’s practice dismantles dichotomies by merging the body and nature, the interior and exterior, the human and the non-human. Her paintings blur the boundaries between organic and inorganic, self and other, prompting expanded ontological imagination.

Working between Korea and Europe, Jo has established a distinctive painterly language rooted in visceral yet speculative forms. Her approach—rendering unfamiliar life forms on the surface of painting—offers a rare perspective within a contemporary art landscape increasingly dominated by data, code, and surfaces. By transforming the cold, clinical language of anatomy into sensory and emotional imagery, she invites viewers to reflect on the boundaries between humanity, nature, and societal norms.

Her invented life forms are grotesque yet ethical, strange yet intimate, hybrid yet consistent in emotional tone. They serve as metaphors for the shared “inner structures” that unite us all, allowing viewers to encounter beings that mirror their own existence.

Jo has garnered international attention, including participation in Frieze Seoul and nomination for the Bundespreis (Federal Art Student Prize).