Jenny Kendler's work revolves around human beings' relationship with the natural world --- focusing on human sexuality and gender as it relates to our often denied animal origins, and environmental issues such as habitat loss, climate change, and the complexity of ecosystems. All profits from the sale of her works are donated to environmental charities.
In her body of work, Kendler re-invents the Naturalist of the past through the lens of modern ecology, feminism and environmentalism. If the Naturalists of the 18th and 19th centuries sought to lay personal claim to the natural world and contain it in a specimen cabinet, Kendler presents her intimate drawings and sculptures as a definitive counterpoint to the view of nature as something to be possessed. She suggests instead, that it is we who are possessed by nature.
While cross-pollinating genres and mediums, Kendler creates works that draw us nearer to nature --- intellectually and emotionally --- to rekindle feelings of interconnectedness, wonderment and love. She employs the language of myth, magic and fantasy, and uses delicacy, fragility, ornamentation and intricacy, to echo the subtle and mysterious relationships of the natural world. In this way, her work stands in opposition to spectacle culture, irony, indifference, and the will to failure.
Kendler truly believes that art has a vital role to play in our most desperate crisis between Nature and Culture, lest one destroy the other. Presenting moments of ecological crisis or wonder, Kendler hands us this tenuous thread to the natural world --- shadowing forth possibilities of ecological attunement and resolution.
Jenny Kendler is the co-founder of The Endangered Species Print Project, the co-founder of OtherPeoplesPixels, and a member of the artist collective Henbane. She is also a member of the Executive Board at threewalls Gallery.
In her body of work, Kendler re-invents the Naturalist of the past through the lens of modern ecology, feminism and environmentalism. If the Naturalists of the 18th and 19th centuries sought to lay personal claim to the natural world and contain it in a specimen cabinet, Kendler presents her intimate drawings and sculptures as a definitive counterpoint to the view of nature as something to be possessed. She suggests instead, that it is we who are possessed by nature.
While cross-pollinating genres and mediums, Kendler creates works that draw us nearer to nature --- intellectually and emotionally --- to rekindle feelings of interconnectedness, wonderment and love. She employs the language of myth, magic and fantasy, and uses delicacy, fragility, ornamentation and intricacy, to echo the subtle and mysterious relationships of the natural world. In this way, her work stands in opposition to spectacle culture, irony, indifference, and the will to failure.
Kendler truly believes that art has a vital role to play in our most desperate crisis between Nature and Culture, lest one destroy the other. Presenting moments of ecological crisis or wonder, Kendler hands us this tenuous thread to the natural world --- shadowing forth possibilities of ecological attunement and resolution.
Jenny Kendler is the co-founder of The Endangered Species Print Project, the co-founder of OtherPeoplesPixels, and a member of the artist collective Henbane. She is also a member of the Executive Board at threewalls Gallery.
