CCA Introducing: Jess Atieno
We’re excited to introduce visual artist Jess Atieno, who will be taking over CCA’s Instagram on Wednesday 7 September. Jess will explore her practice, giving an insight into her research, process and recent work.
Jess was recommended by Dawit L. Petros, a visual artist, researcher and educator who took part in CCA’s panel on East African Modernisms as part of our Irish Modernisms Seminars in 2021.
Kenyan artist Jess Atieno maintains a practice informed by inquiries on place, home and dispossession through the lens of the post-colonial. Atieno sees herself as carrying inscriptions of a colonial past and studying as an adult in the US made her increasingly unable to situate herself in a static reality of belonging. With this inspiration, Atieno time travels into history through its material remains: historical photographs, maps and documents, employing them in prints, installations and tapestry. She turns to the idea of place as the transformative site of hybridity that offers alternative strategies for and models of representation within the post-colonial. Atieno has shown work in Kenya as well as internationally in Africa, Europe and the USA; most recently at Cecile Fakhoury in Abijan and 1.54 Art Fair in New York. She graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art institute of Chicago and is also an alumna of Àsìkò Art School.