Veronica Jackson

Veronica Jackson makes connections across art, architecture, and design as compiled in her multi-decade portfolio in interpretive exhibition and communication design. She honed her conceptual and practical skills by working on culturally significant and historically prominent projects. Examples range from African Voices at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History to Discovering the Civil War at the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

Jackson brings a constellation of capabilities to each endeavor: from communicating to diverse audiences to creating inviting and engaging experiences that promote discovery. She is also a dedicated proponent for intellectual accessibility in the visual arts. Jackson holds firm that once exposed to it, art is a transformative experience.

With the intent to record, interpret, and make aware the impact visual culture has on our daily lives, Jackson received a MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. During her tenure at CCA her work examined identity, agency, and empowerment as performed by African American women in the visual landscape. Her current emphasis—a text based visual art and installation practice—critically elucidates the visualization of gender and race in America, with a special focus on the portrayal, perception, and legacy of black women in popular media both past and present.

Residency/Fellowship

Equal Justice 2017/2018

Website

jacksondesigngroup.com

Location

Blue Ridge Mountains, VA USA

ANTI-RACISM / ALUMNI STATEMENT

As an emerging visual artist, my response to the current anti-black, racist, socio-political moment in America comes in the form of a visual artwork prompted by the heinous murder—perpetrated by three white cops in Louisville, Kentucky—of Breonna Taylor. I made this mask—A BLACK WOMAN WAS SILENCED TODAY—in honor of Taylor’s birthday on June 5, as well as to acknowledge the systematic silencing of black women resulting from (at the very least) violence, disenfranchisement, invisibility, devaluation, and death.

Expanding upon this socio-political moment more broadly, the United States currently finds itself mired in societal discord because the overarching element of the Civil War was never resolved: white supremacy and the perpetuation of the refusal of an empowered, white regime to view the black body as human, and equal in both integrity and value to itself. Thus we continue to fight an informal, underlying, and systemic internal conflict that produces outrageous outcomes such as the recent killings of Ahmad Arbery on February 23, Breonna Taylor on March 13, and George Floyd on May 25, 2020. – Veronica Jackson

For a complete read of Anti-racist statements by SFAI Alumni, visit the SFAI140 Chronicles page. 

SFAI140 Video Presentation