Jenny Hawkinson is an artist and researcher who focuses on place-based research through a methodology of gathering. She works in video, textiles, soundscape, sculpture, installation and public interventions. Her work poetically transforms gathered and found materials and often explores themes of contested territories, anti-monuments, border politics and psycho-geography. Her interests in borderlands came from years of ‘unlearning’ as an expatriate of the America. Over the years she’s held independent artist residencies in Belfast, Northern Ireland and Bethlehem, Palestine. Alongside her artistic research is a commitment to being socially engaged and community focused. Locally she has collaborated with Illicit Projects, a guerrilla theatre troupe grown from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. She has lead several community murals and facilitates intersectional community development with the arts. 

In the Spring of 2024 Jenny formed and facilitated a d.i.y. sound based artist residency that was open to community members throughout her neighborhood, whether they were artists or not. In July 2022 she performed a collaborative sound intervention, Call & Response beneath the Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver. In addition to several group shows throughout the Pacific Northwest, Hawkinson’s solo exhibitions include Beyond Barrier at the Fort Gallery in Fort Langley, BC (2019), Origin Stories at the Bleeding Heart Art Space in Edmonton, AB (2018) and Promised Land at the Yactac Gallery in Vancouver, BC (2017). In 2019 she was invited to the Czech Republic to speak about the intersections of art, faith and community development. 

Hawkinson received a BA in Visual Arts from Trinity Western University and an MFA in Creative Research through Transart Institute (2024). She lives and works in Vancouver, BC on the unceded and traditional territories of  xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ /Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.