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Aryel René Jackson (they/them) is an artist and scholar whose practice engages with soil as a primary and responsive material and weather as affective conditions.

Since 2025, Jackson has explored live performance of image projection and sound to explore “call and response” as a visual and aural ritual. Printmaking extends this process of composing through collograph prints of soil on plates.

Archive & Exhibitions

Education

MFA, Transmedia and Print The University of Texas at Austin

BFA, Video, Photography, and Animation The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

Exhibitions

Resonant Landscapes: Sci-Fi Narratives and Historical Echoes
Ivester Contemporary, Austin, TX
2024

What it means: Iterations of a welcoming place
HOST Series, The Contemporary Austin, Jones Center, Austin, TX
2023

A Welcoming Place
Women & Their Work, Austin, TX
2022

Descendance
Jacob Lawrence Gallery
Seattle, WA
2021

Video Series
New Museum, New York, NY
2019

The Origin of the Blues
RISD Museum, Providence, RI
2017

The Blues Data Crop
Wave Hill, Bronx, NY
2016

Awards & Fellowships

International Studio & Curatorial Program
ISCP, Brooklyn, NY
2025

AIR Program
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE
2024

Juried Time-Based The Future is a Constant Wake
ArtPrize, Grand Rapids, MI
2023

Jacob Lawrence Legacy Residency
Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, WA
2020

Black Spatial Relics Micro Grant
Black Spatial Relics, Philadelphia, PA
2019

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
2019

Royal College Exchange Award
University of Texas at Austin, London, UK
2018

Teaching & Curating

Lecturer, Texas State University, Fall 2021-Fall 2025, San Marcos, TX

Curator, Cage Match Project, The Museum of Human Achievement, 2020-2025, Austin, TX

Visiting Lecturer, The Princeton Atelier, Spring 2023, Princeton, NJ

Lecturer, The University of Texas at Austin, Spring 2021

Curator, Inner Out, Moonmist Gallery & Virginia Commonwealth University Arts, The Anderson, October 2020, Virtual

Et cetera

Performance, “Aryel René Jackson: Re:Future” Monday, April 14, 2025 at Emmanuel Gallery, College of Arts & Media, University of Colorado, Denver, CO

Interview, “Aryel René Jackson on Troubleshooting, Surrealism, and Welcoming Places” by Renee Lai, Glasstire, 2024

Screening, “An Evening with Ariel René Jackson” Monday, May 9, 2022 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for Modern Mondays, New York, NY

Publication, “The Black Traditions of Forecasting”, Antennae Journal, Issue 57, Spring 2022, pp. 91-97

Interview, “Ariel René Jackson on the ‘Detective Work’ of telling truthful stories” by Lise Ragbir, Hyperallergic, February 12, 2021

Lecture, “Forecasting as Cultural Technology”, Conscious Isolation Fine Art Lecture Series, April 24, 2020, London

Last Updated 24.10.31

Recent Work

2025

Quilt Block as Image (Composite Block) III
12x12 inch
Collagraph print with soil, and ink on paper

2025

Quilt Block as Image (Composite Block) II
12x12 inch
Collagraph print with soil, and ink on paper

April 14, 2025
Presented during CU Denver’s Performance Art Week at the Emmanuel Gallery.

Re:Future
9:36 minutes
Watch

Developed from Jackson’s 2019 video work The Future is a Constant Wake. In April 2025, Jackson performed Re:Future at Emmanuel Gallery for Performance Art Week XIII in Denver as a reworking of the earlier piece. In this version, carved print blocks function as vessels for soil, treated as a temporal collaborator that records presence, labor, and movement.

Through improvisational choreography, soil acts as collaborator in a video-guided gesture in response to timing. Audio cues trigger repeated actions such as placing blocks and adjusting projectors, while live performances and projected image unfold simultaneously, collapsing material process, research, and action into a shared temporal space.