I am @ here alive was the culmination of Hawrysio’s 2014 residency, part of the NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) Visiting Artist Series. The exhibition, which wove together earlier print and video pieces with work created specifically for the exhibition, reflects her longstanding commitment to pushing the conceptual boundaries of printmaking with both humour and rigour.

Central to the installation were large sheets of paper running sequentially across the gallery walls — ink rubbings taken directly from the walls of Hawrysio’s studio in Camberwell, South London. These prints functioned as a topographical map, transplanting the irregularities and extrusions of her lofty but rough-edged workspace onto the pristine gallery walls. Subtle scratch marks around the gallery’s circumference, achieved by running her nails against carbon paper affixed to the walls, unified the space, a sort of trail of crumbs leading visitors from one piece to another.

Hawrysio’s approach is deeply rooted in conceptual and social art practice, influenced by the open-ended processes of Joseph Beuys and the machine-led aesthetics of Sol LeWitt. Her practice treats mark-making not merely as a technical process, but as a method of “measuring time” and capturing the “spontaneity of site-specific mark-making”. Another element of this installation was a mark-making device she built — a mechanical arm with a false eyelash that smeared ink onto the interior of a Perspex vitrine at random intervals.

For Hawrysio, printmaking is an interdisciplinary tool used to explore “the indeterminate play of meaning”. As she noted in an interview for Visual Arts News during the residency, her work seeks to extend the theoretical discourse of print, challenging the habitual marginalisation of the medium and moving it into a “post-modern terrain” where the artist’s touch and technical process become a form of site-specific social engagement.