Henna is interested in what can participatory art practice bring to our understanding of these complex social, cultural, and ecological issues. Her work is often made with the participation of people who have a lived experience of displacement and of seeking asylum. These projects have explored ecological and social questions through communal experiences in various landscape settings and examined issues such access to nature and green spaces, what underpins our ideas of home and sense of belonging and how a sense of homelessness – of not belonging – is produced through exclusion.

Henna has developed intersectional, participatory art projects across a range of organisations (heritage, natural science, third sector organisations) and very different environments from the rain forests of Brazil and the boreal forests of Scandinavia https://www.hennaasikainen.com/html/work/air.html the rural landscape of Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland National Park www.d6culture.org/future-pasts.html and the mudflats of Lindisfarne Nature Reserve https://neecco.org.uk/climate-justice-walk-for-climate-change/. Each has offered a unique combination of ecological, cultural and social/political circumstances, all have pointed to the importance of understanding the deep structures that connect them, the ways in which seemingly different things – places, people, ecologies and social issues – are in fact interdependent and intertwined.