Jamie Zimchek, submitted artwork
Jamie Zimchek
Painting
Nutopia
Jamie Zimchek is a multi-disciplinary artist heavily influenced by her fundamentalist youth and world wandering. Years spent internationally as a freelance writer, photographer, and academic lecturing on topics such as U.S. Foreign Policy and Middle Eastern Conspiracy have further shaped her focus. Much of Zimchek’s recent work has revolved around an exploration of the storylines used by controlling power systems as a means of manipulation. Often absurd, these false narratives and imagined truths enforce the separation between us and Other and are sometimes so deeply entrenched that they’ve been all but forgotten. Underlying her studio practice is a visual consideration of these storylines as they’re used to maintain control across cultures and contexts in intimate, domestic settings but also in more public, political ones. Recently, Zimchek exhibited at Juniper Sculpture Park in Plattsburg, New York, Understory Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, and was featured for the Cultural Art Alliance Billboard Project. She has shown work as part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography, the Seaside Prize, and other assorted shows in the U.S. and U.K. Zimchek has an MA in Mediterranean Studies from King’s College London and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is currently based in Northwest Florida and an instructor in the art department at Gulf Coast State College
Works
Jamie Zimchek, submitted artwork
Whose Legacy is it? Is a semi-autobiographical work that serves broadly as a consideration of epigenetics and the ancestral reverberations that, through a wildly improbable roll of genetic dice led to this moment. More specifically, this installation uses soft sculpture and a series of modified polaroid images reimagined as 21 family ancestors to consider the weight of historical narrative, acknowledging the mix of microscopic DNA strands, both good and less fortunate, that lead to any one individual’s existence. No amount of shaking can dislodge either from the family tree. To what extent does this knowledge impact one’s perception of self? To what extent should it? Acknowledging that there’s no changing the past, where does that leave us moving forward?
