Wimbley

Feature Artist: Jessica Wimbley

Artist Statement

I use the literary term biomythography, defined by poet Audre Lorde as a combination of "biography, myth, and history", as an interdisciplinary visual arts practice. By using biomythography and the para-fictional, I investigate and question identity and history, merging both the genetic and biological with socio-historical, creating narratives that shift between micro and macro representations. The figure in these narratives straddles both objectification and subjectification, as a result, creating narratives that conjure multiple histories through the codification of landscape, objects, and the body. The hybridity of images in the work reflect the way in which one composes culture in the digital age, integrating gazes by reflecting the mass consumption and democracy of the Internet. In the video Masking, 2020 I am asking a succession of questions: How does the mask function as a medium in our lives, as a cultural and political signifier, a holder of memory? What does it mean to wear a mask, be seen in a mask, and the transformation that occurs in the experience? Relating to African traditions of the masquerade, in which the wearing of the mask is a spiritual experience, Masking 2020 uses found footage from news clips and the internet that articulate our current cultural milieu, juxtaposing the personal as a site of both shared and individual memory.

Artist Biography

Wimbley received her BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design, M.F.A in Visual Arts from the University of California, Davis, and her MA in Arts Management from Claremont Graduate University. Wimbley has been included in exhibitions at a number of institutions including the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, California State University at Long Beach, Ripon College and other galleries and institutions across the United States. Part of a curatorial team with artist/curator, Chris Christion, Wimbley has developed the curatorial project series Biomythography, with exhibitions in academic and non-profit art spaces in Southern California including California Lutheran University, Eastside International, Los Angeles, University of La Verne, Cerritos College, and Claremont Graduate University.

Website: www.jessicawimbley.com