Jennifer Nelson
Department: Department of Arts and Creative Media
Title: Research Professor
Degrees: BFA Art – New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, MFA Art – New Genres, University of California, Los Angeles
Research: Jennifer Nelson works on creative form-finding at the intersection of art, ecology, sound, and screen-based technologies. Nelson utilizes a performative approach to reimagine social and ecological choreographies, highlighting fragile resources, natural and human, and the global sculptural flow of power and matter. She incorporates her work with restorative justice (brave spaces), trauma therapists (safe spaces) and permaculture in the collaborative, trauma-informed, sustainable making of art. Her current research investigates the use of embodied, whole-brain and interpersonal methods of learning to challenge our collectively destructive daily habits and materials.
Nelson received a Guggenheim grant for Visual Arts. She has exhibited work in museums and festivals including Goethe Institut Athen; Museo MADRE; State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. She was the first Artist-at Work at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens with the durational project Waste (Inheritance).
Nelson is currently a member of the Research and Technology and Innovation Network RTIN and the Center of Excellence for Sustainability
Teaching: Jennifer Nelson was a founding member of the Visual Arts Program, creating and teaching courses in time-based media, video art, and digital image, as well as working with senior students on their cap-stone projects. With her cross-disciplinary background and research, she has also developed classes for Theatre Arts and Cinema Studies.
Service: Nelson currently serves as the Program Coordinator for Visual Arts and as advisor for the Visual Arts Society. Over the last 15 years, she has developed community-based art projects and workshops with children, incarcerated people, residents of psychogeriatric facilities, and immigrant communities.