Baby Jesus

The video work Baby Jesus (2023) presents an extraordinary case of the entanglement between property, the self, and survival. In collaboration with Therese Henningsen, Hansen portrays four nuns from the Little Sisters of Jesus congregation who live in a tower block in Hoxton, London, and a shared house in Walsingham, a Catholic pilgrimage village in the UK. By taking “The Cross” and the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the nuns renounce ownership and feelings of possessiveness. Led by their Catholic belief and relationship to God, their self-concept is based on spreading the Gospel through low-paid service jobs and living in the community. They align themselves with outsiders and practice, in a sense, a counterculture to that of today’s aspirational homeowners. One of the nuns makes baby Jesuses in clay from dozens of plaster moulds in different sizes, filling the void by reproducing the Church’s message with multiple baby objects.