Studio Visit Jennifer Small, Montreal, Canada
When a studio visit makes you see God.
Thanks Jennifer Small xx
with Ginette Bérubé.
Jennifer Small, Montreal, Canada
I Found Jesus at the Flea Market – written by John K. Grande
Dredging the detritus of religion in flea markets, Jennifer Small finds remarkable relics, images, 3-D discards… As the symbols lose their resonance as Western civilization discards its spiritual legacy, Small performs radical surgery to invest these bruised and broken relics with new awkward tensions born of the 21st century. In Third World cultures as religion continues holds its place to help the poor and de-contextualized cultures of the world, religion still brings hope as it once did for us. In our culture of mass consumerism, where object and image and data overload is commonplace, the spiritual essence is now fragmented, atomized in incredible ways.
Flea market finds and cast-away fragments form the basis, the jumping off point for Jennifer Small’s art and sculptural assemblages. These relics, icons Small reconfigures through assemblage, juxtaposition and ingenious invention, in their original context are largely lost in a dystopic pile at the entrance to some empty sacristy from another time.