Fine Arts

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/9878

This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Fine Arts.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

Waterloo faculty, students, and staff can contact us or visit the UWSpace guide to learn more about depositing their research.

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Browsing Fine Arts by Author "Thompson, Jessica"

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    1b, black legs, 52"
    (University of Waterloo, 2021-04-30) Mitchell, Karice; Videkanic, Bojana; Thompson, Jessica
    1b, black legs, 52” is an effort to reconcile with history. Through the recontextualization of black pornographic images, this exhibition serves as a re-imagining of what black women’s futures could be. By creating images that are hyper visible in presentation, yet ambiguous in their representation, these works seek to foster images of the black female body that demand to be seen and understood removed from the historical construction of blackness that has been upheld and perpetuated through white supremacy. Giving the black female body a new meaning, we can begin to cultivate new possibilities for it to be understood differently, and for it to exist in its multiplicity. This show creates space for black women and their sexuality to be unapologetically represented, while also allowing ourselves the grace to acknowledge the historical legacy of racism in an effort to subvert it––ultimately, striving towards reclaiming our agency.
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    Care Packages
    (University of Waterloo, 2023-04-25) De Vuono, Christine Carmen; Coutu, Joan; Thompson, Jessica
    This thesis illuminates the importance of care between individuals and within society. The exhibition, entitled Care Packages, uses installation and sculpture to encourage collective care and support. Through monumental forms of sculpture, I expose the intense stress paid caregivers are subjected to and point to the labour needed to help people during vulnerable transition. Domestic and cultural signifiers embedded in the materials, combined with poetry of inclusion, define and suffuse the space, further augmenting my message.
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    The Chicken Is Just Dead First
    (University of Waterloo, 2021-04-30) Rowe, Racquel; Thompson, Jessica; Videkanic, Bojana
    My thesis exhibition encapsulates my lived experience as a Black woman from Barbados who moved to Guelph, Ontario at eighteen. My studio and artistic research is focused on the ways that food, ritual, hair, and colonialism intersect with the Black female body. By employing the medium of performance art and research into the history of colonization, I use my body to challenge preconceived characterizations (loud, angry, aggressive) often used to define Black women. This research culminated in my MFA thesis that takes the form of performance for the camera and installation. The outcomes of my performances for the camera are as important as my deep-rooted memories they uncover, often prompting further exploration into images I create and their meanings such as for example the seemingly mundane action of washing rice. Keeping traditions (food, ritual, hair) alive through acts of image making is important to me because the videos I create echoe the oral nature of the way things have been passed down to me. The exhibition consists of three large-scale projections with my solo performances for the camera on each, featuring my body against bright, colourful backdrops. Two wall-mounted monitors display video artwork with my family, filmed in domestic environments such as my mother’s kitchen, living room, and granny’s kitchen. Lastly, several small CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) televisions are placed on the floor of the gallery displaying scenes from the East Coast of Barbados.
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    Cul-de-sac Island
    (University of Waterloo, 2019-05-13) Stewart, Jordyn; Tingley, Jane; Thompson, Jessica
    Cul-de-sac Island is a multimedia installation that combines personal research, lens-based strategies and performative re-enactments to camera that engage in a self-reflective investigation of identity, place and territory. Juxtaposing elements of the natural and the unnatural, my work questions personal and collective assumptions about the landscape, while exploring the correlation between nature and nationhood. By re-positioning myself within familiar sites from my childhood, my work interrogates the suburban spaces that have influenced my understanding of nature and the ways in which these constructed environments instill a human privilege over the landscape.
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    In The Mix: An Exhibition of Black Diasporic Studies, Remix Culture, Astrology and Sound
    (University of Waterloo, 2024-05-27) Charles, Charlie Star; Thompson, Jessica; Videkanic, Bojana
    As a Black biracial woman disconnected from my heritage, I research Afrosonic music histories to connect to my Afro Caribbean culture, while gaining a deeper understanding of the historical and social context of music in the broader Black diaspora. My thesis exhibition, In The Mix, encapsulates this research through a site-specific, interactive installation that incorporates sound, music, collage, personal family photographs and archives, disc-jockeying and experimental turntablism. In addition, as a unique expression of my multifaceted identity, I incorporate astrology as a theoretical and formal framework to analyze unseen elements behind musical releases, as well as to create sonic compositions that evoke ideas of time and space. Through my engagement with remix culture, I utilize both audio and visual samples from existing works and create new works. This process of recombination and repurposing of existing work has enabled me to promote a more nuanced and varied understanding of the complexities of Black identity and diaspora. I embrace a more inclusive and diverse range of perspectives in hopes that my work can resonate with a wider audience and contribute to a more comprehensive narrative of the Black experience.
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    Put a finger down if you've ever been personally victimized by social media algorithms
    (University of Waterloo, 2022-04-27) Guenette, Ashley; Thompson, Jessica; Kirton, Doug
    Put a finger down if you’ve ever been personally victimized by social media algorithms is a collection of critical reflections on embedded social media microaggressions reflecting acts of racism, body shaming, the glorification of mental health disorders (such as ADHD, depression, anxiety and eating disorders), as well as ‘That Girl’ routines, and the biased algorithms that make them tick. Using strategies such as humour and exaggeration to my advantage, I translated this digital content into hand-based methods (drawing, painting, soft sculpture, and linoleum carving) to reinterpret this seemingly playful content and to offer the viewer time to reflect on the more hateful sides of social media which are normalized by Pop Culture.
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    Search Party
    (University of Waterloo, 2018-05-17) Wilman, Tait; Andison, Lois; Thompson, Jessica; Cooper, Tara
    Search Party is an installation and video exhibition that explores my identity—how it is constructed and consumed, and how representations of landscapes and discourses of ‘Canadiana’ play in its formation. Since moving to Southern Ontario from Alberta, I feel lost without the Rockies. Attempting to comfort this disorientation, I developed the idea of an alter ego or a persona, a ‘stand-in’ fake for the real. The development of a persona allows for an examination and questioning of the troubled relationship that I have with my own identity. Throughout this body of work, my alter ego attempts to navigate the landscape in search for a place of comfort and a relationship with space. Through the guise of memory and souvenir, the exhibition uses personal memory, strategies of re-enactment, and various familiar display methodologies to explore the aestheticization and commodification of identity, land, and nature.
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    shrimpychip YouTube
    (University of Waterloo, 2020-05-22) Wijshijer, B.; Videkanic, Bojana; Thompson, Jessica
    shrimpychip YouTube is a series of YouTube videos that explore the ways in which digital intimacy and capitalism intersect. The performances, designed for YouTube, strategically exploit emotional responses to the body, the home, and notions of privacy in order to highlight the counterintuitive relationships embodied in digital capitalism. The structural aesthetics of social platforms are deliberately employed in my videos to stress the strangeness of these new economic, cultural, social and personal relationships. In documenting myself using the algorithmic structures embedded in these systems, the work functions as a digital archive of actions and perceptions, providing a firsthand account of the body and thoughts as they are mediated by technology. By tirelessly following trends to the point of ridiculousness, the online persona of shrimpychip empathizes with the internet culture while simultaneously highlighting our vulnerability within these systems.