Maren Hassinger

DC Commissioned Artist

An Object of Curiosity Radiating Love/ Sankofa Park

About

Maren Hassinger grew up in Leimert Park and has become a powerful voice for women and artists of color.

She studied dance and sculpture, earning an MFA in fiber arts from UCLA. Her early work in Los Angeles integrated her versatile talents in collaborative projects with other artists including Senga Nengudi, Ulysses Jenkins and David Hammons. Her work balances the durability of sculptural materials with graceful forms that suggest movement as well as women’s work.

DC Featured Art

""An Object of Curiosity Radiating Love""

Rendering of An Object of Curiosity Radiating Love in Sankofa Park by Perkins&Will

“I think of art as a way to communicate, to share ideas, to make connections with people.”

Hassinger also works with unconventional materials like plastic bags, tree limbs and leaves. Her work invites viewers to engage their own narratives and emotions within the stories she tells through material and form. For her contribution to Destination Crenshaw, Hassinger focuses on emotions engendered through interaction. An Object of Curiosity, Radiating Love is a large pink fiberglass 6 foot diameter interactive orb that glows soft pink when viewers approach it.

Hassinger is an expert in resonant work and An Object of Curiosity, Radiating Love is the most conceptually abstract of all Destination Crenshaw’s permanent commissions, yet it is also the most accessible three dimensional work because of its immediate visceral impact. Always interested in pushing the medium and the experience, Hassinger wants people to both feel and communicate with An Object of Curiosity, Radiating Love as it is encountered outside, in the open expanse of communal space as a symbol of the love vital for our communities in service to one another, and to resist gentrification and erasure.