Jennifer Packer Lecture

Jennifer Packer, Idle Hands, 2021, oil on canvas, 90 x 84 inches. © Jennifer Packer, courtesy of Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York, and Corvi-Mora, London

Join us for a lecture by artist Jennifer Packer followed by an audience Q & A. 

Doors open at 5:45 p.m. Free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Explore the Visiting Artists Program homepage for visitor information, recordings of past events, and more.

Jennifer Packer creates portraits, interior scenes, and still lifes that suggest a casual intimacy. Packer views her works as the result of an authentic encounter and exchange. The models for her portraits—commonly friends or family members—are relaxed and seemingly unaware of the artist’s or viewer’s gaze.

Packer’s paintings are rendered in loose line and brushstroke using a limited color palette, often to the extent that her subject merges with or retreats into the background. Suggesting an emotional and psychological depth, her work is enigmatic, avoiding a straightforward reading. “I think about images that resist, that attempt to retain their secrets or maintain their composure, that put you to work,” she explains. “I hope to make works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships really are.”

Packer was the 2012–13 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014–16. Her work was most recently featured in two major solo exhibitions: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, the largest survey of Packer’s work to date, presented at Serpentine Galleries, London (2020) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2021–22), and Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2021–22), her first exhibition on the west coast. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Tenderheaded, was shown at the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017) and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2018). Her work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and P.5 – Prospect New Orleans (2021). Packer currently lives and works in New York and is assistant professor at The Cooper Union.

Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Department of Painting and Drawing

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and hearing assisted devices are available. For additional access requests, visit saic.edu/access.