Jennifer Lentfer

Jennifer Lentfer
Omaha, Nebraska, USA

STATEMENT

My collage and poetry are focused on rebuilding culture, as well as honoring lineage and community.
My people are the people of the Great Plains, the horizon, the 360-degree view. They are the people of four seasons and four-part harmony. We are resolute, resourceful, and stubborn descendants of German settlers to south-central Nebraska, who benefitted from the Homestead Act to occupy land stolen from the Pawnee people.

Today, industrialized agriculture is robbing families of their dignity, consumers of nourishment for bodies and souls, and the land of its life-giving force. My work invites the descendants of white settlers to consider how a vacuous consumer culture has been formed and how this land and its people have been treated since our ancestors arrived.

My collages are tangible, tactile, and analog–all made from found paper. My only expense is the rubber cement that binds them. I create from a box of images from old magazines and junk mail that I have collected and curated for the last fifteen years, the ephemeral artifacts of my lifetime. Most recently, I have been incorporating recently uncovered photographs, diaries, and administrative documents of my ancestors.

I believe if we can claim our own personal, devastating truths, we can take bolder action together. My work attempts to assure us all of grace and create intentional opportunities for community dialogue.

BIO

Jennifer Lentfer is a collagist and poet living in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A. Lentfer’s analog collages wrestle with, and at the same time, preserve her ancestors’ humanity, while constructing the world she wants to see emerge from reckoning with settler colonialism. Emerging as an artist from a 20+ year career in international aid and philanthropy, she’s had four pieces in shows in Burbank, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Sanquhar, Scotland this year.

ARTIST CONTACT

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IMAGES