HANNAH-MIA
To Hannah-Mia, centering social media is restrictive for her art. “I was thinking the other day, if my Instagram deleted today, I would scream and cry and my art would be gone. We need to fix that. Instagram is not a platform for art anymore, and people are still putting it there and wondering why it’s not being seen.” She continues, “If I plaster my face around New York City and get a friend to interview me and get my friends on the project, it’s like I’m creative directing my own self-portrait. That’s really what it feels like, and everyone that I love and care about is giving their own interpretations of what they think I should look like at this moment.” Hannah-Mia is taking complete authority over her art instead of waiting for recognition from those who are passively interacting with what they see on social media.
This project, Post-Up, is inherently defiant. It is resisting the notion that one has to completely commodify themselves in order to find success. While it may have given individuals an opportunity to work independently in the past, social media has now become incredibly restrictive. By wheatpasting pictures of herself around New York, Hannah-Mia makes a move in complete opposition, speaking to the frustration that she and other artists are experiencing. When it comes to setting herself apart from other young creatives, on the internet or in a city like New York, this project is exactly that; it’s an active rejection, and work like this is important when carving out the standards creatives are setting for themselves and each other.
“Why do I need to have 10k [followers] for you to follow me back so we could work together? Let's get into work first,” and when it comes to choosing artists to work with, she’ll always place the art above the numbers: “Fuck that; I’m going to choose the black girl who is passionate, who is willing to raise their fucking stakes. I’m going to do that because I want to put people on who are doing exactly what I was doing, who are not getting the opportunity. We were really cute with our little influencer-to-artist pipeline vibe that we had going on; it was really cute in 2020, but once again we’ve got to change it up.”
When asked about how she imagines success, she explains to me that her visions continue to evolve, decentering what she sees other people doing. Right now? “Success is being able to pull my friends into things and pay them. Oh my god, imagine paying people. That’s really what my current thing is. I want to pay people. I want to be able to give myself the time between projects to live my life. I want to have a fucking conversation. I want to meet people,” and there's no better way to say it than she does herself: “Success is really all those things combined and maybe some new boots.”