Steffani Jemison (MFA 2009) uses time-based, photographic, and discursive platforms to examine progress and its alternatives. Jemison's work has recently been presented in solo exhibitions and commissions for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and LAXART, and in collaborative and group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Drawing Center, LAXART, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, Bridget Donahue, Laurel Gitlen,Team Gallery, and others. Her work is in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Kadist Foundation, and others. Jemison has completed many artist residencies and fellowships, including the Rauschenberg Residency, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, the Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program, the Studio Museum in Harlem artist residency, Denniston Hill (2012), the International Studio and Curatorial Program, Project Row Houses, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her publishing project, Future Plan and Program, commissions literary work by artists of color and has published books by Martine Syms, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Harold Mendez, Jina Valentine, Szu-Han Ho, and others. Jemison was born in Berkeley, California, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.
Jemison holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. She has served as a visiting artist at many institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hampshire College, the Evergreen State College, and Georgia State University. She has taught fine art at Columbia University, Parsons The New School for Design, Wellesley College, Trinity College, Rice University, the Cooper Union, and other institutions. She is the 2016–17 Arthur J. Levitt '52 Artist-in-Residence at Williams College.
Image credit: Steffani Jeison, Video Still, 2014.
