Hanna Pettyjohn (b. 1983, Manila; lives and works in Dallas) graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman,with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting. The daughter of pioneering contemporary Filipino ceramicists Jon and Tessy Pettyjohn, she combines sculptural installations with paintings in her explorations of identity. Pettyjohn has exhibited in Manila, Miami, Taipei, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and her work forms part of private collections in Southeast Asia.
In 2004, Pettyjohn won first prize at the 37th Shell National Students Art Competition. She received the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Award in 2015. A Filipino-American with a transnational narrative, Pettyjohn possesses firsthand knowledge of the global diaspora. Autobiographical details and “fragments of memory” inform her work, which is tinged with both nostalgia and an acute awareness of life’s transience. Through her large-scale portraits and personal photographsturned-tactile landscapes, she conveys the vague anxiety, loneliness, and alienation that afflict the uprooted.