Alia Hansen was born in 1981 in Ishimbay. At the age of 13, she started studying at a local children’s art school. After graduating high school in 1996, she went on to study at the Ufa Art College and later, at the Theatrical Scenic Painting department of Ufa State Art Institute. She graduated in 2008. During her last years at USAI, she got married and left for Copenhagen. In 2011, she participated in a group project at the Venice Biennial.

The artist began working with abstraction toward the end of her studies at USAI when she started to feel confined within the limits of the academic school. Her path to the abstraction lied through the figurative painting, meaning that initially, the artist started out from a form. Specific images and lived experiences, a certain haptic and visual quality play an important role in the making of Alia Hansen’s art, with emotions that become sublimated into the abstract—pools of color and lines in the painting.

After her return from Copenhagen, Hansen worked as a set designer on various projects for a number of theaters. The first play that the artist was involved in was a children’s fairy tale at the Nur theater. She also worked for the Bashkir State Opera and Ballet Theater and many others. Hansen also designed costumes for such films as A Rifle (2016) and Taganok Team (2021). For a large-scale project Laboratory of the Contemporary Bashkir Opera (curated by Askar Abdrazakov), she created set design and costumes for all contest participants.

Currently lives and works in Ufa and Moscow.