Steffani Jemison

Steffani Jemison
Artist, Steffani Jemison
Born 1981
Berkeley, CA
Nationality American
Education School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia University


Steffani Jemison (b. 1981) is an American artist based in Brooklyn, New York.[1][2] Her work has been shown at Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, and other US and international venues.[3]

Personal life

Jemison was born in Berkeley, California. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2009) and a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia University (2003).[1][4] She was a Tiffany Foundation Biennial Awardee (2013) and Art Matters Awardee (2014). She taught at Rutgers University, Parsons The New School for Design and the Art Institute of Chicago.[3][5]

As a child, she attended summer camp at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Her favorite class was one in which she was asked to write a story about one of the works in the collection.[6]

Works

Major works include Prime (2016), Promise Machine (2015),[7][8] Projections (2014), Stroke (2013) You Completes Me (2013), Personal (2014), Escaped Lunatic (2010–11), Maniac Chase (2008-9), and Same Time.[9] Jemison's 2014 video Personal was included in the show "Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond."[10]

Promise Machine combined a reading group with performance. Participants formed a "Utopia Club," based on the Utopia Neighborhood Club, and including artists, activists, writers, and book club members. Jemison created a musical performance incorporating text generated in the reading group.[11] Jemison was partially inspired by the shared reading experiences that a church creates. Promise Machine attempts to create a similar experience in a secular space.[12] Prime references texts from key historical and cultural moments to explore the relationship between privacy and revolution.[13]

You Completes Me is a performance installation that a live reading of excerpts from urban fiction while the 1927 film The Scar of Shame plays, putting historical moments in conversation with contemporary ones.[4]

Jemison's films Manic Chase and Escaped Lunatic are both inspired by early twentieth-century films.[14] They focus on the actors' movements; she is particularly interested in the political implications of movement.[14]

Along with Heather Hart and Jina Valentine, she curated "The Intuitionists," a viewing program in which artists illustrated concepts from a paragraph in Colson Whitehead's novel, The Intuitionist. This installation was part of a viewing program at the Drawing Center.[15]

As an agent in the Hillman Photography Initiative at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Jemison collaborated with Liz Deschenes, Laura Wexler, and Dan Leers to create a platform demonstrating the relationship between photography and Pittsburgh. Their work emphasized the physical conditions that make photography possible.[6]

Jemison was awarded the Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University in 2017.[16]

Future Plan and Program

Jemison's project Future Plan and Program commissions and publishes literary works by artists of color.[17] This continues her artistic interest in reading while aiming to make books that are available to a wide community.[18] It has published works by Martine Syms, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Harold Mendez, and Jina Valentine, among others.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Bio, Contact : Steffani Jemison". www.steffanijemison.com. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  2. ↑ "Steffani Jemison | MoMA". www.moma.org. Retrieved 2018-05-21.
  3. 1 2 "Steffani Jemison - The Poetry Project". The Poetry Project. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  4. 1 2 Lax, Thomas J. (2013). "Steffani Jemison". Art in America. 101.5.
  5. ↑ "Steffani Jemison". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. 2017-04-10. Retrieved 2018-05-21.
  6. 1 2 "How a Childhood at the Museum Influenced One Artist's Future". Carnegie Museum of Art: Storyboard. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  7. ↑ "Steffani Jemison: Promise Machine | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  8. ↑ "Interview with Thomas J. Lax, Associate Curator at MoMA | French Culture". frenchculture.org. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
  9. ↑ "Steffani Jemison". steffanijemison.com. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  10. ↑ Plagens, Peter (2014-11-08). "Ideology and Art From the Heart of Brooklyn". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  11. ↑ "Promise Machine: At MoMA, Steffani Jemison Explores Blackness and Utopian Thought - Interviews - Art in America". www.artinamericamagazine.com. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  12. ↑ Wilcox, Jess (June 24, 2015). "Promise Machine at MoMA: Steffani Jemison Explores Blackness and Utopian Thought". Art in America. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  13. ↑ "Steffani Jemison: Prime". nurtureart.org. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  14. 1 2 "Interview with artist Steffani Jemison – Manual - RISD MUSEUM". risdmuseum.org. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  15. ↑ Johnson, Ken (2014-07-31). "'The Intuitionists' and 'Small'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  16. ↑ "Fellowships (6/23/2017)". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2017-06-18. Retrieved 2018-05-21.
  17. ↑ "Future Plan and Program". futureplanandprogram.com. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  18. ↑ "Future Plan and Program". Flash Art. 2015-11-09. Retrieved 2017-03-21.
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