Since 1986, Hannah Collins has been making monumental works that document the passage of time and the traces of history on architecture, people and places. One of her major works, La Mina, sheds light on the artist's "method". La Mina is an extension of earlier photographic works, and more particularly those where the built environment is represented from the point of view of cultural change and development.

Filmed in 35 mm over 23 days in La Mina, a residential complex built in 1973 under Franco in order to forcibly settle the gypsies within the outskirts of Barcelona, this film, shown in asynchronous fashion over five screens, is a mix of written and improvised scenes with the participation of the local inhabitants. The choice of the 35 mm format, more complex from the logistical point of view than digital video, conveys the desire for a more sensitive approach to representation, in order to arouse the attention, adhesion and participation of the community. This is the sociological and anthropological aspect of this work developed as a group event.

Quite unlike images taken surreptitiously, the portrayals of Hannah Collins take their roots in situations that she has observed: a former actor in spaghetti Westerns mediates a dispute, an adolescent dreams of becoming an actor, a man collects scrap metal, another bound to a wheel chair sings his cante hondo".

The project developed by Hannah Collins this year at Le Fresnoy is a film which may be imagined as an extension of this work.

The work of Hannah Collins has been shown in many exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Recently, an important exhibition with a publication was organised by the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo in Málaga.

Her photographic and video works have been shown notably at the Nelson Gallery at the University of California in Davis (2003), at the Printemps de septembre in Toulouse (2003), at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York (2003), at the Venice Biennale (2000), at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton in Great-Britain (1999), at the Fondació Joan Miró in Barcelona (1998), at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (1996) and at the 3rd Istanbul Biennale in Turkey (1993).

Her works feature in many public and private collections including the Museu d'Art Contemporani of Barcelona, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Hannah Collins was selected for the prestigious Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery in 1993.