Hillary Holsonback’s films and photographs centre in on identity in a social media obsessed world. Holsonback’s art reclaims a non-utopian view of the future while fostering an unflagging belief in the beauty of classic portraiture, a beauty integral to the unlimited characteristics of storytelling. 

With the new series of video’s presented and their subsequent positioning in her current practice, Holsonback’s work involves a kind of mise-en-scene in which the attitude of the viewer is paramount. Just as film director Dziga Vertov films often seems as crude and intentionally provocative, so can Holsonback’s imagery be seen as simple or easy. The use of these cinematic points and characteristics allow her work to expand, to become more complex, to push the viewer beyond an initial stance of taking things for granted. Working with brief clips of time and length, always the actress, her videos carry the spirit of a post-Cindy Sherman narcissism for a social media set. There is no real beginning or end to her current work, just fragments of engagement.