Jennifer West: Media Archaeology

This debut monograph brings together nearly a decade of “analogital” experiments in film, sculpture, and installation by one of the most committed artists working on the West Coast today. Saturated in a history of avant-garde and Third World cinema (not to mention HIV/AIDS activism and the incipient Riot Grrrl movement) since she was an undergraduate at Evergreen State College, West’s work today treads similar ground: challenging the utopianism of new media adoptees as well as the nostalgia of analog-only film adherents.

The eleven projects reproduced in the book, all produced between 2014 and 2020, fall under the heading of “Media Archeology,” and reveal the historical and material promiscuity of Jennifer West’s experiments in film and art, often tied to the changing geography of Los Angeles and its surrounds. The monograph includes an interview with Stuart Comer, Curator of Media and Performance at MoMA, New York, and essays by Norman Klein, critic, novelist, and urban and media historian, Andy Campbell, art historian, critic and curator, and Chelsea Weathers, art historian and managing editor at Radius Books.

JENNIFER WESTis an artist who has explored materialism in film for fifteen years. Born in Topanga, California, West lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and a BA from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Significant commissions include Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2016-2017; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Art Night, London, 2016; High Line Art, New York, 2012; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2010; and Turbine Hall at TATE Modern, London, 2009.  Her work is in museum and public collections such as and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kadist Foundation (San Francisco/Paris), Thoma Foundation (Chicago/Sante Fe); Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Depart Foundation (Rome); Kadist Collection (San Francisco/Paris); Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania; Henry Art Gallery (Seattle); Rubell Collection (Florida); Saatchi Collection (London), Getty Museum (Los Angeles), among others.

Her solo exhibitions include: “Painted Cat Hacker Film’ Times Sqare Arts, New York City (2021); “Future Forgetting”, JOAN Los Angeles, 2020;  “Emoji Piss Film”, Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, 2018; “ Is Film Over?, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China (2017); “Film is Dead…”, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2017; “Action Movies, Painted Films and History Collage”, Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro, Nuoro, 2017; “Flashlights Filmstrips Projections”, Tramway, Glasgow, 2016; “Aloe Vera and Butter, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK (2012); “Paintballs and Pickle Juice”, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nuremberg, (2010); “Perspectives 171: Jennifer West”, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, (2010); Lemon Juice and Lithium, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2008); “White Room: Jennifer West”, White Columns, New York, (2007).    Select group exhibitions where her work has been presented include, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (2016-17); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg (2014); Kunstlerhaus Graz, Austria (2014); Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio (2014); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); Tate St. Ives, UK (2007, 2013); Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2012); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2010); CAPC, Bordeaux, France (2008); Drawing Center, New York (2008) and ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe (2007).

She has been artist in residence at the SOMA, CDMX (2019); Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York (2014-15) and the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA (2011-12).  Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Frieze and Mousse Magazine. West has produced sixteen zine artist books which were recently acquired by the Getty Museum.  She has lectured widely on her ideas of the “Analogital” and is the Program Director of MFA Art and an Associate Professor of the Practice of Fine Arts at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design.