Jessica Houston

Jessica Houston has traveled from pole to pole using objects, oral narratives, photography, and painting to evoke entanglements between colonialism, globalism and our current environmental crisis. She has worked with communities in the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica, Iceland, and Italy to collaboratively build knowledge across a human and beyond-human spectrum. The variety of voices involved—including poets, penguins and philosophers—reveals the storied matter of these regions. Her practice draws time forwards and backwards, and uses art as a site for the imaginary, that both recognizes and resists colonial attitudes as we collectively imagine possible futures.

Houston has created site-specific works for the New Jersey MOCA, Asbury Park, New Jersey; the Castello di Corigliano, Puglia, Italy; Governors Island, NY, NY; and The Albany Airport, Albany, NY. Select solo exhibitions include The Arktikum Museum, Rovaniemi, Finland; Art Mûr and Occurrence Galleries, Montréal, Canada; The Latimer House Museum, New York, NY; and The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville, TN (upcoming). She has received funding from The Canada Council for the Arts and her work is in the collections of The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts; Prêt d’oeuvres d’art, Musée National Des Beaux-Arts du Quebec; Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), Montréal, Québec; Bank of Montréal, Toronto; and the Consulate General of Monaco, Montréal. She has been invited to The Albers Foundation Residency (Bethel, CT); Centre SAGAMIE, Research + Creation Residency (Alma, QC); CAMAC Centre for Art, Science and Technology (Marnay-sur-Seine, France); and NES Artist Residency (Skagaströnd, Iceland).