May 9-14, 2020
Jova Lynne
Paradise Ads
2020
dimensions variable
video/installation/performance
STATEMENT:
I create photo, video and sculptural installation works that speak to moments of cultural transgressions in imagined landscape. My work describes the code-switching that I encounter as I move through the world as a first generation American navigating my position as both "of" and "other. I am interested in the complexities and dualities that exist within the paradigms of Black-identity particularly as it relates to the Caribbean diaspora. My video work is largely centered around endurance-based performance and the limitations of the femme body in terms of the supply and demand of our labor as well as the humor of mundane daily activity. In my sculptural work, I play with materials that explore the intersections between soft/hard, feminine/masculine, joy/pain, both/and, sharp/dull, delicate/expendable, fake/real. The sculptural works that I create are largely shown in installation or photograph form and are influenced by vintage advertisements from post-colonial promotional materials.
BIO:
Jova Lynne is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist and curator based out of Detroit, MI, of Jamaican and Colombian heritage born and raised in New York City. Lynne graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA in 2010 with a Bachelors of Arts in Video Art and Education. She has worked at the Museum of Moving Image in Queens, NY as well as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. Lynne is a grantee of the Astraea Foundation's Global Arts Fund, which has supported her work on media based projects in Kingston, Jamaica and Berlin, Germany in addition to her work in Detroit. As a co-founder of both BULK SPACE and Black Artists Meetup-Detroit, Lynne is dedicated to creating space for artists to offer each other support, and address their needs. Lynne moved to Detroit in 2015 to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts in Photography at Cranbrook Academy of Art which she completed in May of 2017.