Over the course of the residency, Hawkins formed a narrative through creating images in response to posts found under #love—the most-used hashtag on the platform. Rather than sharing a body of pre-prepared images, she provided the audience the opportunity to witness the project’s development as it happened. The images were filtered through her as she formed a personal and responsive series that moved beyond a mere algorithmic account and connected seemingly disjointed posts together. Hawkins’ residency at Dazibao differs from her previous work, which has used found internet sources and placed the material into a context that is removed from the web. For Love, she reinserted material from Instagram (along with her own footage) back into the platform, exploring the advantages of the Instagram platform while also pushing its many limitations. In a series of dialogue, Dazibao shared several interactions with the artist during the residency through the @dazibaomtl Instagram account in order to offer another channel of engagement for the audience.

In a time when online exhibitions are becoming standard and social media can be mundane, Hawkins' work reveals how art practices can encourage us to more closely examine the ways we experience Instagram and the internet. The artist spoke about the ideas behind Love in an interview with Marie Saadeh.

Anna Hawkins (born in Baltimore, USA) is an artist working primarily in moving images and installations. Her works glean examples from the realms of art history, internet tutorials, fail video compilations, and horror films to examine how images create new ways of seeing and learning. Hawkins completed a BA in Art History at the University of Pittsburgh and received an MFA from Concordia University. She has recently exhibited solo projects at Centre CLARK (Montreal), The Bows (Calgary), the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides (Saint-Jérôme), and the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton). Her works have been shown and screened internationally at the UCLA New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles, USA), the WRO Media Art Biennale (Wroclaw, Poland), LUX (London, UK), and the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Studio Arts at MacEwan University on Treaty 6 Territory ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ Amiskwacîwâskahikan/Edmonton, Alberta.

Marie Saadeh is a recent graduate of McGill University, with a major in International Development Studies and minors in Art History and Communications Studies. She grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and now lives in Montreal. Marie worked on Anna Hawkins’ residency during her internship at Dazibao in the summer of 2021.

Artist: Anna Hawkins
Interview by: Marie Saadeh
Design: Studio TagTeam and Tatiana Matsoulevitch
Edited by: France Choinière
2022
ISBN: 9782922135589 (EPUB)