Steffani Jemison facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Steffani Jemison
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| Born | 1981 (age 43–44) Berkeley, California, U.S.
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| Education | Columbia University (BA) School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA) |
| Occupation | Artist, educator |
| Awards | Herb Alpert Award (2021) Guggenheim Fellowship (2020) Creative Capital Award (2020) Radcliffe Fellowship (2016) |
Steffani Jemison (born in 1981) is an American artist, writer, and teacher. She creates videos and art projects that mix different types of media. Her work explores how Black experiences, sounds, and everyday traditions connect with modern and conceptual art.
Her art has been shown in many famous museums. These include the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Guggenheim Museum. Her work has also been displayed at the Whitney Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Steffani Jemison lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Early Life and Education
Steffani Jemison was born in 1981 in Berkeley, California. She grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. When she was a child, she went to summer camp at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Her favorite class was one where she wrote a story about a piece of art in the museum.
She earned a bachelor's degree in comparative literature from Columbia University in 2003. This degree is about studying and comparing different types of writing. Later, she received a master's degree in fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009.
Teaching Career
Steffani Jemison is a professor at Rutgers University. She teaches media in the art and design department at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. Before this, she taught at the Parsons School of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Artworks and Projects
Steffani Jemison has created many important artworks. Some of her major works include Prime (2016), Promise Machine (2015), and Personal (2014). Her 2014 video Personal was shown at the Brooklyn Museum. It was part of an exhibition called "Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond."
Promise Machine was a project that combined a reading group with a live performance. People formed a "Utopia Club" for this project. This club included artists, activists, writers, and book club members. Jemison then created a musical performance using words and ideas from the reading group. She was partly inspired by how churches bring people together through shared reading. Promise Machine aimed to create a similar feeling in a non-religious setting.
Prime uses texts from important historical and cultural moments. It explores how privacy and big changes in society are connected.
You Completes Me is a performance art piece. It features a live reading of parts from urban fiction stories. At the same time, an old film from 1927 called The Scar of Shame plays. This project connects past events with modern ones.
Jemison's films Manic Chase and Escaped Lunatic are inspired by early 20th-century movies. They focus on how actors move. She is interested in the deeper meanings of movement.
Steffani Jemison also helped curate an art program called "The Intuitionists." For this program, artists created art based on ideas from a book by Colson Whitehead. This art was shown at the Drawing Center.
She also worked on the Hillman Photography Initiative at the Carnegie Museum of Art. With other artists, she helped create a platform that showed the link between photography and the city of Pittsburgh. Their work highlighted the physical things that make photography possible.
Future Plan and Program
From 2010 to 2011, Jemison worked on a project called Future Plan and Program. Through this project, she asked artists of color to write and publish new literary works. This project continued her interest in reading. It also aimed to make books available to many different people. It has published works by artists like Martine Syms and Jibade-Khalil Huffman.
Solo Art Shows
Steffani Jemison has had many solo art shows. This means her art was the only art shown in the exhibition. Some of her solo shows include:
- End Over End, JOAN, Los Angeles, 2022.
- Steffani Jemison, Annet Gelink, Amsterdam, 2022.
- Broken Fall, Greene Naftali, New York, 2021.
- End Over End, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, 2021.
- Steffani Jemison: Sensus Plenior, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, 2020.
- Steffani Jemison, Kai Matsumiya, New York, 2019.
- Steffani Jemison: New Videos, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2019.
- Decoders – Recorders, De Appel, Amsterdam, 2019.
- Sensus Plenior, Jeu de Paume, Paris; CAPC Bordeaux, 2017.
- Escaped Lunatic, MoMA, New York, 2016.
- Steffani Jemison: Maniac Chase, Escaped Lunatic, and Personal, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, 2015.
- Same Time, LAXART, Los Angeles, 2013.
- Museum as Hub: Alpha's Bet Is Not Over Yet, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2011.
Awards and Recognitions
Steffani Jemison has received many awards and honors for her art. These include a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She also received a Creative Capital Award and a Radcliffe Fellowship. Other awards include a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award.
She has also been an artist-in-residence at several places. These include the Studio Museum in Harlem, Project Row Houses, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
