Steffani Jemison

Steffani Jemison (born 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]

Steffani Jemison
Born1981 (age 39–40)
Berkeley, CA
NationalityAmerican
EducationSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia University
Websitewww.steffanijemison.com

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][5] She was a Tiffany Foundation Biennial Awardee (2013) and Art Matters Awardee (2014). She is an Assistant Professor in Media in the Department of Art and Design at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.[6] She previously taught at Parsons The New School for Design and the Art Institute of Chicago.[3][7]

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.[8]

Works

Major works include Prime (2016), Promise Machine (2015),[9][10] Projections (2014), Stroke (2013) You Completes Me (2013), Personal (2014), Escaped Lunatic (2010–11), Maniac Chase (2008-9), and Same Time.[11] Jemison's 2014 video Personal was included in the show "Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond" at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014. [12]

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.[13] 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.[14] Prime references texts from key historical and cultural moments to explore the relationship between privacy and revolution.[15]

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.[16] They focus on the actors' movements; she is particularly interested in the political implications of movement.[16]

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.[17]

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.[8]

Jemison was awarded the Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University in 2017.[18]

Jemison was awarded a Creative Capital grant in 2020 along with forty other artists.[19]
Jemison debut solo exhibition at the Kai Matsumiya gallery, NY, in 2019.[20]

Future Plan and Program

Jemison's project Future Plan and Program commissions and publishes literary works by artists of color.[21] This continues her artistic interest in reading while aiming to make books that are available to a wide community.[22] It has published works by Martine Syms, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Harold Mendez, and Jina Valentine, among others.[1]

References
  1. "Bio, Contact : Steffani Jemison". www.steffanijemison.com. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  2. "Steffani Jemison | MoMA". www.moma.org. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
  3. "Steffani Jemison - The Poetry Project". The Poetry Project. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  4. Lax, Thomas J. (2013). "Steffani Jemison". Art in America. 101 (5).
  5. "AitN: March 11, 2019". Columbia College Today. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  6. "Steffani Jemison | Mason Gross School of the Arts". www.masongross.rutgers.edu. Retrieved November 16, 2019.
  7. "Steffani Jemison". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. April 10, 2017. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
  8. "How a Childhood at the Museum Influenced One Artist's Future". Carnegie Museum of Art: Storyboard. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  9. "Steffani Jemison: Promise Machine | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  10. "Interview with Thomas J. Lax, Associate Curator at MoMA | French Culture". frenchculture.org. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  11. "Steffani Jemison". steffanijemison.com. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
  12. Plagens, Peter (November 8, 2014). "Ideology and Art From the Heart of Brooklyn". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
  13. "Promise Machine: At MoMA, Steffani Jemison Explores Blackness and Utopian Thought - Interviews - Art in America". www.artinamericamagazine.com. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  14. Wilcox, Jess (June 24, 2015). "Promise Machine at MoMA: Steffani Jemison Explores Blackness and Utopian Thought". Art in America. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  15. "Steffani Jemison: Prime". nurtureart.org. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  16. "Interview with artist Steffani Jemison – Manual - RISD MUSEUM". risdmuseum.org. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  17. Johnson, Ken (July 31, 2014). "'The Intuitionists' and 'Small'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
  18. "Fellowships (6/23/2017)". The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 18, 2017. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
  19. "2020 Creative Capital Award Recipients Announced". www.artforum.com. Retrieved February 18, 2020.
  20. "Steffani Jemison at Kai Matsumiya (Contemporary Art Daily)". contemporaryartdaily.com. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
  21. "Future Plan and Program". futureplanandprogram.com. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  22. "Future Plan and Program". Flash Art. November 9, 2015. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
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