BIO
Jennifer Zackin is a transdisciplinary artist and educator based in the Hudson Valley, New York, and the Sacred Valley of the Inca, Cusco, Peru. Zackin's close engagement with materials enacts its own form of alchemy and syncretism, transforming the familiar into the unexpected. Her practice begins in the studio and expands into the community, nurturing relationships, supporting regenerative methods, and honoring the performance of art-life.
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Working across sculpture, installation, performance, collaboration, drawing, painting, photography and social sculpture, Zackin explores abstraction as a gateway to understanding complex ecosystems and ecological systems. In her Soil Series, she creates vibrant abstract compositions that explore the elemental forces of biodiversity. In turn, nature inspires her drawings, paintings, and social sculptures, some of which have transformed empty lots into community hubs for art and soil building. In response to social and environmental challenges, she has upcycled burlap coffee bags into trellises for medicinal plants to grow for the public's use; organized communal weaving events; wrapped a grove of trees with brightly colored rope, illuminating the negative space between the trees to make visible the unseen relationships that shape the living world; and created absorbent tentacles from salvaged materials to help clean up toxic oil spills.
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Zackin’s work has been exhibited in museums nationally and internationally, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Spertus Museum, Chicago, IL; Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; ICPNA, Cusco, Peru, Alianza Francesa, Lima Peru and the Zacheta National Art Gallery, Warsaw, Poland. She has received commissions from the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) for "TAPS" on Governors Island in NYC; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; River Valley Arts Collective at The Al Held Foundation, Boiceville, NY and MASS MoCA at the Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA.
She is the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships and residencies, including Arts Mid-Hudson, Factory Direct, New Haven, CT (in conjunction with Pinchbeck Rose Farm); Art Omi, Ghent, NY; the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL; and the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME.