Jeanine Oleson (born April 9, 1974) is an American interdisciplinary artist working with images, materials and language that she forms into complex and humorous objects, performance, film, video, sound, and installation. Oleson's work explores themes including audience, language, land/site, music, and late Capitalist alienation[1]
The subject of Oleson's art is questioning and confronting big ideas.[3] Her interdisciplinary work is marked by an interest in the conflict between contemporary life, the sensorial, and material concerns. Thinking through research and hands-on making/craft, she creates complicated, intertwined bodies of work. These large-scale projects involve performative, complex tableaux that result in responses anywhere from confusion to pleasure. Oleson's practice encompasses many different approaches to making her objects including performances, videos, installations, sound/music, art-based activism and her role as an educator.[4] Oleson often works collaboratively.
Oleson is also a lead collaborator since 2013 on a participatory project, Photo Requests from Solitary that provides images to people held in solitary confinement and supports efforts to end the practice in US prisons and jails. Her collaborators are Jean Casella and Laurie Jo Reynolds.
Exhibitions
Selected exhibitions include the following.
2017 Can you feel it?, Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles, CA[5]
2017 Conduct Matters, Hammer Project, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, May 6-August 6, curated by Connie Butler and Emily Gonzalez-Jarrett[6]
2016 The Voice, Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul, S. Korea, curated by Jieun Seo 2016[7]
2016 It Can Howl, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA, curated by Daniel Fuller[8]
2015 The Eccentrics, SculptureCenter, Queens, NY, curated by Ruba Katrib[9]
2015 Destroy, she said, Pierogi, Brooklyn, curated by Saul Anton and Ethan Spigland[10]
2014 A Sea Change Into Lands Rich and Strange, Abrons Art Center, curated by Amanda Parmer[11]
2014 Hear, Here, residency/exhibition/public programs, New Museum, New York, NY, curated by Johanna Burton[12]
2014 Still Acts, La Mama Galleria, NY, curated by Ian Daniels and Sara Reisman[13]
^Mena, Jasmine; Vaccaro, Annemarie (2014), "Role Modeling Community Engagement for College Students: Narratives from Women Faculty and Staff of Color", Feminist Community Engagement, Palgrave Macmillan US, pp. 53–74, doi:10.1057/9781137441102_4, ISBN9781349494729