Veronica Jackson

Veronica Jackson’s background encompasses the critical examination of visual culture. As an architect and designer she creatively solves problems related to the structural systems within virtual and built environments. As an artist she records, interprets, and makes aware the complexities in which humans exist and affect their social surroundings. Her visual art making practice is a combination of past professional disciplines, present lived experiences, and the cache of contemporary and historic research accumulated. Jackson’s initial and ongoing project—The Burden of Invisibility—is the physical manifestation of her evolution from interpretive designer to visual artist, as well as a reaction to the world around her. This work forms the foundation of Jackson’s practice which investigates how black women see, don’t see, value, or devalue themselves in visual culture, and how these attitudes affect their sense of agency in constructing their own imagery or endeavors to mark space. Jackson’s oeuvre is text-based, autobiographical, and 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.

Additionally, as a cultural producer Jackson’s visual contributions are performances in social justice, which she defines as the fight to reclaim her own body, to acknowledge her own agency to live and love her own truth, and to reveal to anyone who has ever felt disenfranchised or “othered” that they may do the same.

Residency/Fellowship

Equal Justice 2017/2018
Revolution 2022

Website

jacksondesigngroup.com

Location

Bedford, 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

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