Jen D’Mello

Jen D’Mello; Incite Swerve, Shift Ensemble, 2022; Transparencies, permanent transparency pens, thread, turkey feathers; Dimensions variable; Photography by Evan Walsh







Jen D’Mello; Incite Swerve, Shift Ensemble, 2022; Performance 







Remedios Varo; Creation of the Birds; c.1957; Oil on masonite










Jen D’Mello; Excerpts from Murmurations; 2022

INCITE SWERVE, SHIFT ENSEMBLE

Debuting at the closing reception, Incite Swerve, Shift Ensemble is a meditation on ritualized movement excavated from memory. Over the course of three hours, D’Mello conjures memories of a ritual carried out by her grandmother and great-grandmother during her childhood.

Accompanying these memories is the recreation of vision in which she encounters the owl humanimal from Remedios Varo’s Creation of the Birds, where the owl punctures her flesh with bird feathers at the bottom of a cerulean blue sea. Despite her capacity to grow wings, she chooses to move along the sea floor, contributing to the preservation and regeneration of queer proprioception; the traces of which she marks on transparencies. These traces will serve as markings for future movements; as such, D’Mello becomes both bird and bird-maker.

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BIO

Jen D’Mello is a writer, performance, and sound artist from Southeast Los Angeles County. She engages in intellectual ruminations on queer sociality, paying careful attention to women’s mobility, social proprioception, and murmuration as lyric.


@JEN_DMELLO

JENDMELLO.COM