Greene Naftali

Steffani Jemison

Black and white photo of a person wearing a dark outfit standing in front of two large windows with curtains.

Steffani Jemison, Similitude, 2019 (still)

Biography

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Steffani Jemison, *Sensus Plenior*, 2017. Installation view, *Whitney Biennial 2019*, curated by Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2019

Steffani Jemison attends to the seam between conceptual precepts and embodied knowledge. Her multidisciplinary approach spans time-based, sculptural, and discursive mediums, informed by deep research into movement practices, literature, ethnomusicology, and the history of cinema. A 2020 recipient of a Creative Capital Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors, her recent work examines the liberatory potential of opacity and quiet. Calligraphic drawings on clear film or tempered glass suggest an unreadable language, amplifying what she calls the “tensions between what can be read, what can be intuited, and what refuses to give up its secrets.” Mining the Black vernacular tradition of encrypting what cannot be said, Jemison looks to the archive for alternative genealogies of mark-making that sidestep the modernist narrative. The artist is perhaps best known for her lush video portrayals of highly skilled performers, whose spellbinding physical feats pose the questions at the heart of Jemison’s own practice. “How do we move?” she asks. “How are we moved by each other? And how do we have the courage to pour ourselves into another without fear of depletion?”

Installation view, Steffani Jemison, CAPC – Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017

Steffani Jemison (b. 1981) lives and works in New York. A solo exhibition of her work is currently on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford through August 3, 2025. Jemison's work is also on view in ton not. not ton at Kunsthalle Münster, Germany through May 25, 2025. Solo exhibitions, screenings, and performances include Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2024); Greene Naftali, New York (2024, 2021); JOAN, Los Angeles (2022); Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2022, 2020); Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon (2021); Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2021); Kai Matsumiya, New York (2019); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2019); Lincoln Center, New York (2018); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2017); CAPC Bordeaux (2017); MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2017); Nottingham Contemporary (2017); RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island (2015); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015). Notable group exhibitions include Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2024-25); Counterpublic, St. Louis (2023); A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art and Baltimore Museum of Art (travelling 2022–24); Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York (2021); Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem, organized by The Studio Museum in Harlem and The American Federation for Arts (travelled 2019–21); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2019). Jemison is Associate Professor of Art & Design at Rutgers University; her first novel, A Rock, A River, A Street, was published by Primary Information in 2022.

Her work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.