j e s s d u n n

Giant sinkholes are opening up all around in the desert surrounding the Dead Sea. Drought and hot conditions have been evaporating the water from the salinated sea, and rainfall has washed away the salt deposits in the earth that have been forming there for millions and millions of years. As a result, the earth has been unexpectantly and impossibly disintegrating at a moment’s notice, creating sinkholes in a seemingly sturdy desert landscape. These sinkholes’ only warning of ensuing and sudden earthen vacancy are usually only visible by a small unassuming depression in the earth’s surface.

In short, small actions are changing history, environment, and topography. These small actions, these hidden geysers of emotional pressure, exist within our own social terrain, and many of these fissures of change are made visible through the weight and pressure of artistic output. Sometimes it takes the ground falling literally out from beneath our feet for a breaking point to be noticed, to alert us or remind us of what sort of time and place we are existing within.

This is the main question I ask with my work.. How and why can art be a something that we fall into-- to observe our surroundings from a different perspective, to be dropped below our usual gravitational comfort (earth under your feet, sky in its usual place), to feel the temperature and light of our physicality in a new way.

I believe in the possibility that art can create change, that it can uproot our perceptions. I believe that art is one of the strongest veins feeding the pulse of the collective human body, and certain messages and dialogues sent down that stream can alter the functions of these organs we call countries, these nerves we call societies, and the heartbeat that connects us indefinitely. Art is the small sliver of space between where our own personal body ends and the world’s begins. It is the slice of matter between our feet and the borrowed earth we move about on. It is the sensory manifestation of consciousness trafficking between people.

Art is the place where our cells meet other cells; it is the action of foreign bodies of thought entering our deepest cavities. It is the rambunctious curiosity of our own internal system craving the touch of different matter, the light bent in someone else’s eyes. Making art is the act of pushing growth through the skin of self housing our seeding minds.

When art becomes political, social, and particularly focused on reaching towards change, it functions as an antidote for apathy, injustice, and misunderstanding gathering in the most sensitive areas of our collective nervous system. Art can open up our tissues and show us where we connect. I make art that is political, that reflects the current time we are in as well as the complications of history, and that speaks about that physically invisible yet intuitively voluminous place where our shared body touches the ground.

Please email me for a resume/list of exhibits/list of publications.