Biography

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Jennifer Herring-photo credit
​Jennifer Hartley Illanes is a Canadian Multimedia Artist working in Calgary as a Studio Assistant with Natalie Gerber, and as a Studio Assistant at AUArts. Her practice makes use of mediums such as ceramics, silk-screening, fibre arts, digital media, and performance in order to layer interpretations of materials. She holds a BFA in Sculpture from The Alberta College of Art+ Design, and received the Board of Governors Graduating Student Award in 2016.  

Jennifer has participated in the Contextural Fibre Arts Residency, the ACAD Artist in Residency Program with a focus on Mental Health Awareness, has shown her work in galleries in Alberta and Manitoba, and with performance art documentation reaching audiences across the world, her art practice is continuing to expand.

Jennifer’s work explores themes of the middle ages, extravagance, wealth, religion and playful social critique, with a focus on the pomegranate as a symbol of the cycle of life, and spirituality. By making use of literary and historical symbols and stories, she binds the past with the contemporary in an attempt to evaluate our society through the lens of previous centuries. Some of Jennifer Illanes’s work has focused on medieval knights, symbols of wealth (contemporary and Victorian), and the sensuality of Art Nouveau. Another aspect of Jennifer’s research focuses on the future of young adults in society, and space travel; through the use of self-deprecating humor, she hopes to make our apocalyptic fears more approachable.