Anonymous was a Vlog

Mary Addison Hackett

Exhibition Dates
February 5 – March 31, 2022


First Saturday Flag Raising Reception March 6, 2022
4-7pm
As part of her solo exhibition, Mary Addison has created a flag for AIR_(space) Projects and we will host a flag raising reception during the March Art Crawl, Saturday, March 6, 4-7pm.

Closing Event: Outdoor screening of Hackett’s video works in the Courtyard at the Packing Plant Thursday, March 31st, 7pm.

About the Exhibition:
Anonymous was a Vlog, is a solo exhibition of works by Mary Addison Hackett. The series title is in reference to a quote by Virginia Wolf in her essay, A Room of One’s Own: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”
This exhibition features a flag and 21 video episodes that run on a monitor within the space on constant loop. Each vignette ranging in length from 40 seconds to 4 minutes. This episodic performance project was inspired by the history of the female pioneer and the modern-day homesteader. These short vignettes are constructed around the everywoman persona of a woman artist at mid-life, who, through a cam-girl dialogue of fast-paced jump cuts, discusses situations, personal and universal, while creating a life in the Mojave Desert. The project was first screened in the open desert, inside a DIY screening hut created out of found materials.

Artist Bio:
Mary Addison Hackett was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1961 and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. She has a diaristic practice making work based on moments from day-to-day life, with the concepts of home, maintenance, and daily living forming the foundation for an autobiographical practice concerned with the transient nature of being. Her videos often combine performance with wry humor, philosophical inquiry, and feminist overtones.

She works across painting, photography, video, and writing. She has exhibited widely across the United States and her work has been critically reviewed in numerous publications. Hackett earned her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA in Painting from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She recently returned to Tennessee after four years of rural living in the Mojave Desert and is currently based in Nashville.

Hackett has exhibited and screened her work widely throughout the United States, including the Joshua Treenial at BoxoPROJECTS (Joshua Tree, CA); Unpaved Gallery, (Yucca Valley, CA); Marcia Wood Gallery (Atlanta); David Lusk Gallery (Nashville, TN); John Davis Gallery (Hudson, New York); the Ogden Museum (New Orleans); the Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA); ACME., PØST, and Kristi Engle Gallery, (Los Angeles). Screenings include the Aurora Picture Show (Houston, TX); Plexus Projects (Brooklyn, NY); and The New York Underground Film Festival (NYC). She has received grants and awards from the Desert X Artist Relief Fund, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Her work has been critically reviewed by Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times and featured in Float Magazine, Burnaway, New American Paintings, n+1 magazine, Two Coats of Paint, The Tennessean, Hyperallergic, and The Nashville Scene, among others.