Jessica Oreck
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Jessica Oreck STATEMENT “From Where I Am” is an on-going epistolary body of work–a collage-based, mail art, travel diary. The series assimilates many facets: a ceaseless wanderlust, an obsession with collecting, a reveling in new perspectives, and a deep fascination with the impenetrable miscellany of detritus/treasure that filters through time. I’m enthralled by the objects and remnants that fall through the cracks–caught somewhere in limbo between belonging(s) and trash–the habitually forgotten residues of other people’s lives. I tend to think of myself less as an artist and more as a Bower Bird, compositing and arranging archipelagos of intricate nests. The collages each engage directly with a sense of place. Every collection is comprised of materials gathered in a single location. Drawing on the limitations and precision of the imagery, the collages reveal a sort of palimpsest of ethos–a layering of mutating cultural vogues, the anonymous censorship of time, and my own socially muddied sense of self. The body of work as a whole is littered with tropes of fragmentation–implications of a new homeless, rudderless generation–splintered egos, empty thresholds, indistinct, fractured landscapes. The series is motivated by an exacting arrangement, a sensitive cataloging of the sublime, casual, and transitory images that assemble our lives. “From Where I Am” is more than a series of two-dimensional collages; it is, quite physically, an orientation toward community, connection, and identity–a reflection of my existence as a foreigner. In my work as a filmmaker, I have spent long periods time in Japan, Russia and Eastern Europe, I’ve traveled extensively across parts of Africa and the Middle East, lived with a family of reindeer herders in Northern Lapland and I currently reside in the German countryside. I am rarely at “home” for more than two or three months a year. The sensation of being immersed in a culture and language to which I don’t belong is of equal importance to the delicate lines of communication that tie me back to those I know. Each collection of collages is sent to various recipients, inscribed with a personal message, from where I am. BIO Jessica Oreck makes projects across mediums in an effort to re-inspire a sense of wonder about the world of the every-day. She’s made several feature films (Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009), Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys (2013), The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga (2014), and One Man Dies a Million Times (2018)) that have been shown around the world. Jessica also works in paper-based animation, creating educational content for TED and other online networks (Mysteries of Vernacular (2011), In a Moment of Vision (2017), and Arthropoda (2014)). Collage has been a part of Jessica’s animations for more than a decade, but since the beginning of 2016, she has been producing more permanent pieces for her ongoing, epistolary series, “From Where I Am”. ARTIST CONTACT IMAGES
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