Genesis Jerez: Her Maiden Name

Using old photos, xerox transfers, charcoal, and paint on raw unstretched linen canvas, New York-based artist and 2020-2021 Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in-Residence, Genesis Jerez, reconstructs domestic environments through collage that feel both familiar and uncanny. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, Jerez’s work relies heavily on patterns and textiles, which repeat and repeat, ultimately taking the shape of flooring, chairs, couches, and forming masked-like figures.

The raw canvas is a central part of the composition that gives each work a sense of nostalgia and a feeling of brittle age. The emptiness creates an opportunity for revision, opening the work to fragments of truth that are cut up like collage. In images and photographs, sights and smells, layers and erasures, the picture is made full by distance, reclamation, forgiveness, and deliverance.