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JESSICA WIMBLEY

Two women superimposed.

Americana: Warrior II, 2018
Jessica Wimbley
Photo Collage, Graphite, and Pastel on Paper in Antique Wooden Frame
13 x 19 inches
Location: Social Sciences Building, Third Floor

Jessica Wimbley uses the literary term biomythography, defined by poet Audre Lorde as a combination of “biography, myth, and history”, to define her interdisciplinary visual arts practice. By using biomythography and the para-fictional, she investigates and questions identity and history, merging both the genetic and biological with socio-historical, creating narratives that shift between micro and macro representations. Using aesthetic elements such as collage, digital imagery, appropriation, panoramic landscapes and space imagery, provides both a conceptual and visual metaphor for the galvanizing what is seen and unseen, and questioning the scope of the human experience and identity. 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. The finished work reflects historical artistic approaches of painting and drawing with Photoshop, collage and digital photography, itself becoming a hybrid. The Americana series continues to investigate multiple histories and identities, specifically as it relates to American identity formation. Framed in a classical oval reminiscent of Victorian photographic portraiture, the work references the biological (eggs, cells, etc.) as well as the scientific (slide gels, medical/scientific slides) and illustrates implicit and explicit identities integrated within one individual. Through the merging of images, the artist seeks to create a hybrid, which exposes the shifting of identities in relationship to both historical and social political understandings of American history and citizenry. Using her own family history as a template, she explores the relationship between the indigenous and the diaspora, linking the histories between both Native American and African-American as central to the formation of the Americas as an economic, political, and cultural force.

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. Wimbley has been recognized for leadership in her work with academic museums and galleries, having received a fellowship and certificate in Leadership from Association of Academic Museums and Galleries and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Wimbley’s work in arts management includes having launched, managed and conceived the program Art After Hours at the Pomona College Museum of Art, serving as Board member of the non profit Museum Educators of Southern California, panelist for the department of Cultural Affairs in Los Angeles, Public Art division. As the newly appointed Director of Museum Education at the Jan and Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at University of California, Davis, Wimbley continues her work in arts administration, community outreach, and programming. 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, and Claremont Graduate University.