Jina Valentine

Memoranda (NYSE:GEO) 2018 iron gall ink, oxidant on handmade paper (from hand sewn quilt) 3 panels 30x22 inches each This work examines the government memo as a seemingly innocuous missive, and reproduces three such memoranda issued by the current administration. One of the works in this series reproduces Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ memo written to the Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on February 21, 2017, raising a painful issue that disproportionately affects people of color--incarceration. The memo reversed the Obama administration’s plan to phase out federal use of private prisons, a plan that responded to an audit finding more safety and security problems in privately versus publicly run institutions.

Based in Chicago, Jina Valentine is an Associate Professor of Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her interdisciplinary practice is informed by the intuitive strategies of American folk artists and traditional craft techniques, and interweaves histories latent within found texts, objects, narratives, and spaces. She has exhibited at venues including The Drawing Center, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the CUE Foundation, MCA Chicago, the DiRosa Preserve, Southern Exposure, and Marlborough Gallery. She has participated in residencies which include the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, and Banff Centre in Alberta. Her work has received recognition and support from the North Carolina Arts Council, Art Matters Foundation, and the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC. Jina is also a cofounder of The Black Lunch Table (BLT), which is an ongoing collaboration with New York-based artist, Heather Hart. The project was first staged in 2005 at the artist residency Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The BLT has since taken the form of oral archiving sessions, salons, peer teaching workshops, meet-ups and Wikipedia edit-a-thons. BLT has been hosted by cultural and academic institutions around the country and internationally, and has received support from Creative Capital, the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC Chapel Hill, and the Rema Hort Foundation, and has been featured in Art21 Magazine, Artsy.net, and Hyperallergic. Jina received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Stanford University.

www.jinavalentine.com