Jaclyn Wright is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from the Great Lakes region. She received her BA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and her MFA from Indiana University. In 2014 she was the visiting artist at the University of Cincinnati and was granted an artist residency at Latitude Chicago. In 2015 she served as the guest co-editor of Papersafe Magazine, “Turbulent Bodies / A Cross, A Wild Sea”. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and published widely. Recent and upcoming exhibitions of her work include: The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City), RE: Art Show (NYC), Perspective Gallery (Chicago), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (NYC), Sala Muncunill (Barcelona, Spain), LhGWR Gallery (The Hague, Netherlands), and SCAD Museum of Art (Savannah, GA). Her work has been included in the collections at the the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection in Chicago, IL. In 2018 she accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Photography & Digital Imaging at the University of Utah, College of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City.
Untitled, Dye Sublimation on Aluminum, 2017
Untitled, Dye Sublimation on Aluminum, 2018, Install View
Untitled, Dye Sublimation on Aluminum, 2017
The Yawning Mouth of Hell!
The Yawning Mouth of Hell is an expression used to describe the vagina dentata, the non-human status of women as android and animal, the identification of female sexuality as enigmatic, invisible and unknowable, cold and calculating, castrator or decapitator of the male. In this work, I am interested in revealing the inherently exploitative and patriarchal relationship of capitalism to the gendered body and the environment through an ecofeminist (dual subjugation) approach.
This work combines traditional analog photographic techniques with contemporary digital methods and fabrication processes. Through this hybridized approach I draw connections between historical conceptions of photography’s material connection to reality and contemporary notions of its representational infidelity. Through the use my body, specifically the form of a large birthmark on the right side of my neck, I am visualizing how this history maps changing perceptions of the human body.
My birthmark is often assumed to be a sign of domestic abuse or promiscuous sexual behavior by strangers. Interpreting this as a sign of submissiveness many individuals have felt comfortable crossing boundaries normally in place between strangers, creating a power dynamic in which they felt it permissible to touch, grab and ridicule my body. By using the materiality of photography and this bodily form I am able to mimic the effects of these histories in my processes by disrupting the protective elements of traditional imaging. I am considering the residual effects of trauma by deconstructing images to the point of obliteration and focusing on the reconstruction of the remaining symbols.
Untitled (cut out), Dye Sublimation on Aluminum, 2018, Install View
Untitled (detail), Dye Sublimation on Aluminum, 2018, Install View
4×5 Dark Slide Mask (I), Archival Inkjet Print, 2017
1 Dark Slide / 20 Variations, Gelatin Silver Prints, 2017
1 Dark Slide / 75 Variations, Gelatin Silver Prints, 2018, Install View
4×5 Dark Slide Mask (II), Archival Inkjet Print, 2017
Look Through, Look At, Look Over (I), Archival Inkjet Print, 2017
Look Through, Look At, Look Over (II), Archival Inkjet Print, 2018
Look Through, Look At, Look Over (III), Archival Inkjet Print, 2018
Look Through, Look At, Look Over (IV), Archival Inkjet Print, 2018
Untitled Triptych (I), Archival Inkjet Print, 2018
Untitled Triptych (II), Archival Inkjet Print, 2018
Untitled Triptych (III), Archival Inkjet Print, 2018
Untitled (Plasticity, I), Latex Paint, 2018 (Install View)
Untitled (Plasticity, II), Archival Inkjet Print, 2018 (Performance)
Untitled, Archival Inkjet Print, 2017
To view more of Jaclyn Wright’s work please visit their website.