Hannah Collins was born in London in 1965. She attended the Slade School of Fine Arts in London (1974–1978) and travelled to the United States to complete her training via a Fulbright Scholarship (1978–1979). She also enjoyed time on the other side of the desk, teaching in schools and institutions such as the UC Davis, California, the Royal College of Art, London, and Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, Roubaix.
Proficient in photography, video, textual and literary works, Collins uses the aforementioned mediums to investigate socio-historical frameworks, geographical locations and biographical moments. A subject or theme, once identified, is often explored throughout a prolonged period or cycle that can last up to several years. By dedicating time to reveal the underlying complexities of her approach, Collins celebrates life, the individual. Through artistic immortalisation and communication, she touches a form of collective memory that confers her works distinctive potency.
The sense of community is both an active and passive aspect of her work. From 1989 to 2010 she resided in Barcelona and soaked up the various complementary and sometimes conflicting identities that segment cultural life. One of her focuses has been the Romani community and culture, both in Spain and in Russia, which she has documented through film, spending extensive periods living among the community for her depictions to be true and honest. She followed a similar immersive methodology when documenting the life of tribal groups in the Colombian Amazon.
In addition to being nominated for the Turner Prize in 1993, she won the Spectrum Award from the Sprengel Museum Hannover (2015), the European Photography Award (1991) and the Olympus Award (2004), among others.
Collins’s work amazes as much as it inspires, and has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in prestigious institutions, including Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, MACBA Barcelona, Reina Sofia Madrid, Dallas Museum of Art, the Luxembourg Museum, and the Sprengel Museum Hannover. The latter museum housed a retrospective of her work in 2015, which travelled to Camden Art Centre, London and Baltic Centre, Newcastle. The show was accompanied by an eponymous monograph.
Recent initiatives include a digital slide show created in association with musician Duncan Bellamy, which was shown at the Tapies Foundation Barcelona and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019). In 2020, Collins curated We Will Walk – Art and Resistance in the American South at Turner Contemporary, in Margate, England.
The artist currently lives and works between London and Almeria, Spain.
