Love and Blue Light Blue at Dazibao
Blue Light Blue at the Art Gallery of Alberta
Fall Fell Felt at the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides
Fall Fell Felt at the Bows
How to Chop and Onion at Eastern Edge
How to Chop an Onion at Centre CLARK
With Outthrust Arm at Artspace
With Outthrust Arm at the Concordia Univerisity MFA Gallery
Venus at Interaccess
Anna Hawkins is an artist working primarily in moving image and installation. Her works center around the ways that images, gestures and language are circulated and transformed online and the impacts of technology on the intimate spheres of daily life.
Her recent exhibitions include solo projects at Dazibao (Montreal,CA), the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton, CA), The Bows (Calgary, CA), the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides (St-Jérôme, CA), Eastern Edge (St. John’s, CA) and Centre Clark (Montreal, CA). Her works have been shown and screened internationally at the UCLA New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles, USA), the WRO Media Art Biennale (Wrocław, PL), LUX (London, UK), and the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Studio Art at MacEwan University on Treaty 6 Territory ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan), Edmonton AB.
CV
contact: hawkins.anna.c@gmail.com
Fall Fell Felt
2018
Fall Fell Felt begins from an examination of “fail” videos, a popular genre where physical blunders and bloopers are caught on camera and disseminated online. Focusing on an extremely prevalent sub-genre, so-called “girl fails,” this project tests the ability of these images to elicit empathy, while considering the ways that women’s bodies been used throughout the history of moving images to provoke physical and visceral responses from viewers.
Addtional info:
Fall Fell Felt: Digital Publication released in conjunction with the exhibition at The Bows (formerly Unititled Arts Society).
“Fall Fell Felt” HD Video ,00:10:38 (1 min. clip - full video available upon request)
“Fall Fell Felt” HD Video ,00:10:38 (2 min. 30 sec. clip - full video available upon request)
Blue Light Blue
2021
Blue Light Blue is a film and video work that uses the blue light emitted from the backlit LED screens of cellphones, tablets and laptops as a formal element, an experimental narrative device, and a primary material. The work draws aesthetic inspiration from horror films and the cinematic device of “day for night”—a technique used throughout the history of film where footage shot during daylight is processed with a strong blue tint so that it reads as nighttime. Throughout Blue Light Blue, the notions of day and night are confused and the protected, intimate space of the bedroom is transgressed. Blue light is cast as the antagonist in a pseudo horror film where screens masquerade as mirrors or windows or light sources, all the while surveilling us as we gaze into their simulated depths.
Additional info:
Art Gallery of Alberta exhibition publication with a text by Lindsey Sharman
Struts Gallery production residency documentation with a text by Geordie Miller
“Blue Light Blue” 16mm transferred to digital and 4K Video, 00:15:19, Soundtrack by Anna Hawkins and Collin Johanson (3 min. trailer - full video available upon request)
Love
2022
Love explores the shapeshifting nature of language on the internet. In the video, images extracted from the Instagram platform–all found under #love–are transformed and integrated with original footage shot by the artist. The work began as an Instagram residency with Dazibao in the summer of 2021. #love is the most used hashtag on Instagram and currently there are over 2 billion posts that are tagged in this way. Online, the meaning of a word can be morphed by the contexts in which it is found and the associated images it has accrued. If each of the 2 billion posts using #love provides a new context for the word, it becomes nearly impossible to determine any fixed meaning for the term. Connecting seemingly disparate images, Love tries to understand and link all of the possible associations of a given word at a single moment in time through narrative. A voiceless narrator—a loose personification of the Instagram platform or perhaps even the internet itself— addresses the viewer in the form of a love letter. They express an understanding of love and describe a relationship based around the diverse imagery and sometimes illogical associations created by #love.
Additional info:
Digital publication for Love from Dazibao is available for free download HERE
“Love” 4K Video, 00:07:42, Soundtrack by Anna Hawkins and Collin Johanson (2 min. excerpt - full video available upon request)