Deborah Jack, is a St. Maarten and Jersey City based multi-disciplinary artist whose work is based in video/sound installation, photography, painting and text. Her work engages a variety of strategies for mining the intersections of histories, cultural memory, ecology and climate change. Her current practice connects the effects of the hurricane storm surge in relation to coastal erosion, the saltwater inundation of intertidal spaces She imagines these rhizomatic, protective intersectional landscapes and wetlands as sites of resistance. This altered landscape, post surge, though temporary, is an exciting conceptual space regarding the intangeble memory of water as it intersects with the land and the people who live there.
Her work was featured in the exhibition Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990’s-Today at the MCA Chicago and ICA Boston in Fall 2023. In Fall 2021 a retrospective, Deborah Jack: 20 Years was presented at Pen + Brush in New York City. She has exhibited at TENT Rotterdam, the Perez Art Museum of Miami in the 2019-2020 exhibition, The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art, and Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, Portland Art Museum, and Delaware Art Museum. Her work is in the collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, MCA Chicago and the Smith College Museum of Art. Deborah received a Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists (2021), Jersey City Individual Artist Grant (2022), a 2023 Changing Climate Resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute and was a Surfpoint Foundation Artist-in-Residence (2023). Deborah Jack received a 2024 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Deborah is currently a Professor of Art at New Jersey City University.
Deborah will participate in the upcoming exhibition, Hurricane Season, at The Des Moines Art Center. New works will be exhibited in her anticipated solo show, Intertidal Imaginaries: The Resistant Geographies of the Shore(coast) in the Aftermath of Saltwater(storm) surges, at the Houston Center of Photography and the Prospect 6 Triennial, the future is present, the harbinger is home.
Deborah Jack
E-mail: debjack4@gmail.com
EDUCATION
2002 MFA State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
SELECTED RESIDENCIES & AWARDS
2024 New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Fellowship Award, USA
2023 Soros Art Fellowship, Open Society Foundations, USA
Surfpoint Foundation, Artist in Residence, York, ME
Santa Fe Art Institute, Thematic Artist in Residence for Climate Change, Santa Fe, NM
2022 Nancy Graves Foundation, Artist Award, USA
Jersey City Arts Council, Individual Artist Award, USA
2003 Light Work, Artist in Residence, Syracuse, NY
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024
Intertidal Imaginaries: The Resistant Geographies of the Shore(coast) in the Aftermath of
Saltwater(storm) surges, Houston Center of Photography, Houston, TX
2023
the water between us remembers..., Smith College Museum of Art, Northhampton, MA
sometimes the aftermath is the storm..., Colgate University Museum, Clifford Gallery, Hamilton, NY
2022
“...wonder at the heartbreak and reassemble the fragments of shattered symmetries, until...”, 150 Media Stream, Chicago, IL
2021
Deborah Jack: 20 Years, Pen and Brush, New York, NY
2016
the water between us remembers, so we carry that history on our skin...long for a sea-bath and hope the salt will heal what ails us, Martin Gallery at Muhlenberg College, Muhlenberg, PA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS/SCREENINGS
2024
Prospect 6: the future is present, the harbinger is home, Prospect New Orleans, New Orleans, LA (curated by Ebony G. Patterson and Miranda Lash)
Homo Sargassum, Museum of Fine Arts at FSU, Tallahassee, FL
Hurricane Season, Des Moines Art Center, De Moines, IA (curated by Mia Laufer)
Beatrice Glow: When Our Rivers Meet, New-York Historical Society, New York, NY
Transgressing Lands: Eleven Artists Reimagine a Horizon, The Boiler in ELM Foundation, Brooklyn, NY
Femme Digital, Dineen Hull Gallery at Hudson Community College, Jersey City, NJ
Diasporic Solidarities, The Avery Research Center and the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, Charleston, SC
2023
Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today, ICA Boston, Boston, MA (curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates)
Kept Alive Within Us, Art Gallery of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada (curated by Sally Frater)
Rest is Power, NYU Center for Black Visual Culture, New York, NY (curated by Dr. Deborah Willis, Dr. Joan Morgan and Kira Joy Williams)
Traces on the Landscape, Princeton University Museum- Art on Hullfish, Princeton, NJ (curated by Beth Golnik)
Unsovereign Elements, Kelly House- University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (curated by Cecilia Gonzalez Godino)
2022
Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL
Picturing Black Girlhood, Paul Robeson Galleries, Newark, NJ
A Thousand Secrets, Apexart, New York, NY (curated by Mae Miller)
Seascape Poetics, 4th Space and The Curating and Public Scholarship Lab (CaPSL), Concordia University, NY
2021
Isolation to Revolution/Rebirth to Dissent, Pen and Brush, New York, NY
2020
The Visual Life of Social Affliction, TENT Rotterdam Contemporary Art Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (curated by David Scott and Erica Moiah James for Small Axe)
The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL
Race, Myth, Art & Justice, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, Harlem, NY (curated by Grace Ali, C. Daniel Dawson)
2018
When the Land Speaks video program, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI
Revival: Contemporary Pattern and Decoration, Longwood Art Gallery, the Bronx, NY (curated by Rocio Aranda-Alvarado)
2019-2017
Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, Calif., Sept. 16, 2017–Jan. 28, 2018; Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University & Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, New York, summer 2018; Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, fall 2018; Portland Museum of Art, Maine, Spring 2019; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, summer 2019 (curated by Tatiana Flores) (traveling exhibition) (catalog)
SELECTED ARTIST LECTURES
2023
Saltwater Resistance: Visualizing the (un)geographic & Resonance of Archipelagic Memory in the Caribbean, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY
2022
Beyond Boundaries: Seeing Art History from the Caribbean, Clark Conference, The Clark Institute, Williamstown, MA
2021
Waves of Memory and History from a Caribbean Lens, Visual Culture Colloquium, Bryn Mawr, PA (in conversation with C.C. McKee)
TFAP@CAA (The Feminist Art Project @ College Art Association), College Art Association Annual Conference
2020
McKinney Visiting Artist Speaker Series, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
San Diego State University, San Diego, CA
The David Geffen Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Spelman College, Atlanta, GA
2013
Visual Speakers Series, University at Buffalo, Amherst NY
RECENT READINGS, PANELS, PODCASTS & PRESENTATIONS
2023
“Re-Placing: Marking the Landscapes and Memories of Chattel Slavery,” Colgate University, Hamilton, NY (panel with William E. Williams, Nona Faustine & Kyle Bass)
2021
“Press your Ear to the Wind: Duet 3,” Gallatin NYU , New York, NY (film screening and conversation with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons)
“Oceans Of Knowing - The Ocean as a Space of Origin & Destiny,” Podcast Episode #3, SeaScape Poetics, Virtual
“Beyond the Netherlands,” Panel Discussion, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
2010
“Visualizing Caribbean Art and Culture in the Twenty-first Century,” Panelist, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (with exhibition curator, Tumelo Mosaka; scholars, Aisha Khan and Annie Paul; and artists, Jean-Ulrick Desert and Steve Ouditt)
EXHIBITION CATALOGS
— “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today,” Del Monico Books/Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2022
— Bhana, Hershini, Ali, Grace, Deloughry, Elizabeth and Lanay, Jessica. “Deborah Jack: 20 Years,” Pen and Brush, New York, NY, 2022
— Ortiz, Maria Elena, Pearce Dr., Marsha. “The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art,” Pérez Art Museum, 2019
— Bennett, Oneka. “Race, Myth, Art & Justice,” Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, curator Grace Ali, C. Daniel Dawson, Harlem, NY
— Flores, Tatiana and Stephens, Michelle Ann. “Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago,Museum of Latin American Art, 2017
— Dees, Janet and Hofmann, Irene. “Unsettled Landscapes,” SITE Santa Fe; 1st edition May 26, 2015
— Mosaka, Tumelo. (ed.), “Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art,” Brooklyn Museum / P. Wilson; 1st edition (2007)
SELECTED ARTICLES, ESSAYS AND REVIEWS
— Dozier, Ayanna. “3 Artists on the Role of the Caribbean in Environmental Art”, Artsy, April 16, 2023, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-3-artists-role-caribbean-environmental-art
— Reyes Franco, Marina. “A Complex Survey of the Caribbean Diaspora in Chicago Goes Beyond Geographical Boundaries”, ArtNews, April 12, 2023, https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/forecast-form-art-in-the-caribbean-diaspora- mca-chicago-1234663866/
— Uszerowicz, Monica. “Deborah Jack’s Poetic Work Draws Parallels between Hurricanes and Caribbean History”, Artsy, November 16, 2021, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-deborah-jacks-poetic-work-draws-parallels-hurricanes-caribbean-history
— “what is the value of water if it doesn’t quench our thirst for...”, Small Axe, March 1, 2021; 25 (1 (64)): 155–166. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-8913610
— “Drawn By Water,” Forgotten Lands: Caribbean Art and Dialogue, Volume 03: In Defense of Paradise, 2021
— Lanay, Jessica, ”Mare Incognitum / Unknown Sea: Deborah Jack Interviewed by Jessica Lanay; BOMB Magazine, Feb 24, 2021
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/mare-incognitum-unknown-sea-deborah-jack-interviewed/
— C. C. McKee, “a salting of sorts”: Salt, Sea, and Affective Form in the Work of Deborah Jack, Art Journal, 78:2, 14-27, 2019