INTERVIEW
Hanna Inaiáh
When the Constructed Meets the Wild
In Hanna Inaiáh's compositions, nothing is accidental—each line carries weight, each pattern pulses. Her work doesn't separate the wild from the constructed; it lets them merge without hierarchy. Drawing from textile memory and the charged contrasts of Rio de Janeiro, her images gather meaning through layered motifs, ornament, and deliberate excess.
In this conversation with G—G Generative Generation, Hanna traces a return to tactile knowledge—gestures inherited through heritage and care, held in the body. She describes a practice where composition becomes continuity, and where making is driven not by display, but by sensibility.
Artist
HANNA INAIÁH
Lives
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
Interview
G—G EDITORS
Published
JANUARY 2026
Even during my studies in Fashion
and my postgraduate work in Print Design,
I was drawn to designers who used
their craft as more than aesthetic exercise.
Artist
HANNA INAIÁH
Lives
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
Interview
G—G EDITORS
Published
JANUARY 2026
G—G
What first formed your way of seeing—visually, emotionally, structurally—before visual language even became part of your practice?
HANNA INAIÁH
I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, in a house full of women who made things with their hands. My great-grandmother was a seamstress, my grandmother painted and wove tapestries, my aunt knitted. Art, for me, was never something distant or theoretical—it lived in gestures, in the texture of fabric, in the colors of the house. I never studied art formally. My deepest education came from these domestic rituals and affections. Those women taught me—without ever naming it—that creating is also a way of caring, of resisting, and of telling stories. Everything I do now is rooted in that kind of knowledge. It's intuitive, but it carries memory. It's aesthetic, but it's also deeply emotional.
G—G
Were there instances in your design education when clothing began to carry meaning in ways you hadn’t expected?
HANNA INAIÁH
Even during my studies in Fashion and my postgraduate work in Print Design, I was drawn to designers who used their craft as more than aesthetic exercise. Figures like Vivienne Westwood, Coco Chanel, and Zuzu Angel changed my understanding—not just for their creations in fashion, but for the social and political impact they promoted. They showed me that clothing is also discourse. Zuzu Angel, especially, as a Brazilian visionary, demonstrated how fashion could become a form of political expression. While my formal education gave me the technical foundation, these figures taught me that what we create visually can be acts of defiance or care. That understanding carries into everything I do now, even when I'm no longer designing collections.
G—G
In your work, ornament, pattern, and rhythm often move beyond surface effect. Are there visual histories or aesthetic lineages you find yourself drawn to—consciously or not?
HANNA INAIÁH
I've always been fascinated by ornament—not as embellishment, but as language. Styles like Art Deco and Arts and Crafts speak to me deeply, not just for their beauty, but for their structure, rhythm, and belief in the power of pattern. They showed me that design can hold cultural memory, that repetition and excess can carry meaning. I also draw from textile history—figures like Raoul Dufy, William Morris, Eugène Séguy, Anna Maria Garthwaite. Many of them weren't classified as artists in their time, but their work transformed how we see and touch the world. I'm inspired by the way ornament once moved between science, architecture, and emotion—how it wasn't separate from life, but woven into it. Even outside visual art, I'm constantly gathering. I look to music, poetry, botany, psychology. I want my work to be in conversation with the world—not just with other artworks.
Over time, I began to see
that excess wasn't something to suppress.
It was the language I needed.
Even during my studies in Fashion
and my postgraduate work in Print Design,
I was drawn to designers who used
their craft as more than aesthetic exercise.
That contrast between the
constructed and the wild taught me
to read beauty in contradiction.
G—G
In a visual culture that privileges restraint and editing, where does the impulse toward 'too much'—too colorful, too ornamental—become necessary rather than indulgent?
HANNA INAIÁH
It's always been there, but for a long time I felt I had to contain it. Coming from design, I was trained to edit, to conform, to work within what was considered tasteful. But my instincts always pulled toward what's seen as "too much"—too colorful, too emotional, too ornamented. Over time, I began to see that excess wasn't something to suppress. It was the language I needed. Today, I work with what might be called a non-normative aesthetic. I'm interested in what disrupts minimalism, what challenges the logic of control. Through my images, I question beauty standards, gender norms, concepts of belonging. I want to create work that blurs the lines between the beautiful and the uncomfortable, that reclaims what's been dismissed as decorative or indulgent. Because in that space, something else emerges—something honest, hybrid, and alive.
G—G
When generative tools become fluid extensions of your practice, how do you understand their role—as collaborator, material, or something else entirely?
HANNA INAIÁH
I see these tools as extensions of my imagination. They don't replace my vision or background—they amplify them. I still draw, I still build references by hand, but these technologies let me test ideas that once lived only in intuition or desire. With them, I can try things that were previously impossible—or that would have taken weeks to explore. But it's never about the tool alone. What guides the result is always my sensitivity, my direction, my intention. The technology doesn't invent anything on its own. It responds. It's more of a silent collaborator than an author. I think of it as a way to build images that carry both emotional resonance and formal complexity—without having to choose between the two. And crucially, it allows me to insert Latin American perspectives, especially those of women and racialized artists, into technological spaces that remain predominantly Eurocentric.
G—G
What shifts when creative work moves from responding to external demands toward following internal impulses? How does one relearn freedom from professional constraints?
HANNA INAIÁH
For a long time, my work as a designer was tied to external expectations—deadlines, collections, commercial goals. Even when I tried to be expressive, there were limits. Generative tools helped me break from that logic. They opened a space where I could create without needing permission. But more than that, I had to actively "un-format" myself—desformatar—from years of design training. It's a deliberate process of unlearning the rules about what's acceptable, marketable, appropriate. Now I follow what moves me—what I long to see in the world, not what already exists in it. I can explore hybridities, embrace the excessive, build speculative images that don't need to justify themselves. The process has become a kind of reclamation: of time, of authorship, of imagination. What I'm doing isn't about automation. It's about creating futures that haven't been imagined yet.
Over time, I began to see
that excess wasn't something to suppress.
It was the language I needed.
That contrast between the
constructed and the wild taught me
to read beauty in contradiction.
G—G
You mentioned this process of ‘un-formatting’ yourself from design constraints. What did that look like when it began to take shape in your work?
HANNA INAIÁH
Everything happened with dizzying speed. I had only been working with generative tools for two months when Farm, a beloved Brazilian fashion brand, invited me to create their first international campaign using these tools. As a print designer, working with them had always been a dream, but to realize it through this completely new language felt surreal. Almost immediately after, the work began traveling: I was featured in Experimenta magazine, then became the cover of Zupi—a Brazilian art publication I'd collected obsessively as a reader. Suddenly there were exhibitions in Paris, Canada, Russia. Early AI art publications were interviewing me. The velocity was overwhelming but also revealing. It showed me that there was a genuine hunger for what these tools could express when guided by artistic sensibility rather than technical fascination. In some way, I was helping to form this emerging field, bringing a Latin American, feminine perspective to a conversation that desperately needed it. The rapid recognition confirmed I was on the right path—that this "un-formatting" was necessary not just for me, but for what the medium could become.
G—G
As someone raised in a city where visual exuberance is everyday language, how did that cultural intensity inform the way images emerge in your work?
HANNA INAIÁH
Rio gave me my visual rhythm completely. I grew up obsessed with architectural details—iron gates with their intricate patterns, tiled facades, stained glass windows casting colored light. These elements lived alongside the botanical excess of the city: broad leaves, tropical flowers, plants sprouting from impossible places. That contrast between the constructed and the wild taught me to read beauty in contradiction. But my heritage is hybrid. There are Indigenous, European, and Panamanian roots in my family, and I feel that blend in my practice. It's not linear—it's layered. It comes out in the way I work with contrast, in how I move between popular and refined, digital and ancestral, softness and excess. There's no single visual grammar. It's more like a woven fabric, with threads from different times and places.
G—G
If ornament is a kind of gesture, what knowledge moves through it? And how do memory and emotion become part of form?
HANNA INAIÁH
For me, ornament is not just decoration—it's a way of remembering. It's something that holds stories, gestures, time. I grew up watching the women in my family transform the everyday through their hands: my great-grandmother sewing, my grandmother painting or embroidering, my aunt knitting. These weren't just skills—they were forms of care, strength, autonomy. That kind of making stays with you. Even when I'm using digital tools, I think through those textures. A pattern, a curve, a color—none of it is neutral. What I call "memória sensível"—sensitive memory—is exactly this: the visual and emotional inheritance we carry, appearing as prints, ornaments, textures, symbols. I think of images as something tactile, emotional, full of ghosts. The screen doesn't erase that. If anything, it makes it more necessary to bring those traces into the work.
My process doesn't begin in the visual.
It begins in the sensory. I try to stay in that space
of listening—both to the world and to myself.
G—G
Are there forms of knowledge or sensation that enter your work indirectly—through mood, rhythm, intuition—rather than through direct reference?
HANNA INAIÁH
I don't separate disciplines in my mind. Music, poetry, biology, psychology—they all feed my process in quiet ways. Sometimes a line of poetry triggers a palette. Sometimes a botanical structure suggests a rhythm. Sometimes an emotional state becomes a composition before I even know why. I compose music too, so I often think through sound—its weight, its tempo, its silence. When I'm creating images, I'm often also listening inwardly, letting something emotional guide the form. It's not about reference, but resonance. A kind of intuitive mapping between feeling and form. My process doesn't begin in the visual. It begins in the sensory. I try to stay in that space of listening—both to the world and to myself. Creating from what moves me emotionally.
G—G
Have moments outside the studio—whether personal, emotional, or otherwise—altered how you approach making?
HANNA INAIÁH
Motherhood changed everything. It rearranged my sense of time, of permanence, of care. It made me think more about what we leave behind, and how we communicate through beauty, through stories, through image. It softened some things in me—but it also sharpened others. I started creating not just for myself, but also with a sense of future. It made me wonder what kind of visual world we're offering the next generation, what repertoires of freedom and expression we're building from childhood. Loss did something else. It brought me back to art as a place of healing, not just expression. During moments of rupture, I found myself reaching for the act of making as a way to stay whole. The image became a space for survival, for reinvention, for tenderness. It's where I could put things that had no other language yet. Today, my work carries all of that—technique, emotion, memory, rupture, desire. And it keeps evolving, because I do.
G—G
As the tools evolve and the art world accelerates, what feels most vital to protect in the act of making?
HANNA INAIÁH
Right now, what feels most urgent is preserving the pleasure of creating. Protecting that space where things are born from curiosity, from sensitivity, from not knowing. I want to keep working in a way that leaves room for error, improvisation, intuition—because that's where the images come alive. Not from control, but from listening. At the same time, I feel a deep need to keep pushing the encounter between technology and emotion. I use generative tools, yes, but never as a substitute for presence. What guides the image is still the human gesture—the visual memory, the affective archive, the desire behind the composition. What I want is to create visual worlds that resist categorization. Images that are excessive, hybrid, strange, and tender. That carry the mark of what doesn't conform. Because that space—the space outside the frame—is where other futures begin to take form. Where we can imagine what we'd like to see in the world, rather than what already exists. ◾️
My process doesn't begin in the visual.
It begins in the sensory. I try to stay in that space
of listening—both to the world and to myself.
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