Jenna Van Buekenhout
TLDR:
Jenna Van Buekenhout is an undisciplinary artist creating soft sculptures, poetry, photography, and installations that incorporate scraps of vulnerability and whatever else I can get my hands on. My work is about trying to find better ways of living and conceptualizing so that we create better worlds. Informed by social psychology and activity theory. The work is never the end product for me, but a mediator for connection and justification for research.
Based in Mohkinstsis (Calgary, Alberta)
MFA Maine College of Art & Design 2025
BFA Alberta University of the Arts in 2019
Contact: jennavanbee@gmail.com
FYI
Frequently Asked and Unasked Questions
Things I want you to know about my practice and my art and me and books (I love books)
What do you mean by Undisciplinarity?
The various disciplinarities communicate something about how an artist frames or approaches their practice. I am interested in playing with the dissolution of distinctions between different disciplines, and in breaking down the assumptions through which we approach our everyday worlds.
I would also like to align my practice with associations of unrulyness.
Recommended Reading:
Art-Based (Un)Learning, edited by Jeroen Lutters, Fabiola Camuti, and Rahul K. Gairola
Why Rocks?
Rocks are deceptively simple and casually familiar to most people, which make them a great starting point for conversations that lead into trying some weird stuff with cognitive metaphors.
The rocks are a metaphor for our emotions, and the way we create barriers between our inner selves and what we show the world. If we can connect just a little, to touch each other, we would understand that appearances aren't all we are. Our physicality has more depth, softness, and complexity than can be seen from the outside.
The rocks are also a metaphor for talking about support. Sometimes to be a rock for someone is to be firm, to give them something steady to hold on to. Sometimes to be a rock is to be somewhere soft to land.
Recommended Reading:
Stone Worlds by Barbara Bender, Sue Hamilton, and Christopher Tilley
Landscape in the Longue Durée by Christopher Tilley, Michael J. Allen, Jill Cobley, Andrew Meirion Jones, Karolina Pauknerová, Clarissa Sanfelice Rahmeier, and Priscilla Trenchard
🛠 UNDER CONSTRUCTION 🛠