Artist Statement
Jennifer Garza-Cuen is an artist concerned with the complex weave of social structures, with groups and sub-groups and the continued impulse to categorize and define.

Working in a constructed-documentary style Jennifer Garza-Cuen explores ideas of cultural memory and inheritance through the revision, reenactment, and recounting of myths.

With a basis in the tradition of social commentary, Garza-Cuen creates histo-cinematic narrative re-tellings more focused on posing questions or setting the scene in which questions will naturally form than coming to conclusions or providing answers.

Finally, as a former expatriate American, Garza-Cuen is primarily interested in American themes: American mythology, empire, society, regions, sub-cultures and their norms and customs as well as the idea of 'American-ness' as it affects her own, continuing, self-defining process.

 

 

Jennifer Garza-Cuen is a photographer from the Pacific Northwest. She received her MFA in photography and MA in the History of Art and Visual Culture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her BA in comparative literature was completed at the American University in Cairo. During both years of her attendance at RISD, she received the prestigious RISD GS competitive grant. She was also awarded the Daniel Clarke Johnson, the Henry Wolf, and the Patricia Smith Scholarships. Additionally, she has received fellowships to attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Oxbow, Brush Creek UCROSS, and Hambidge. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, published in contemporary photography journals such as Blink, The Photo Review, and Conveyor Magazine as well as on-line journals such as Conscientious, Feature Shoot, Aint-Bad, Dazed, and Juxtapoz Magazines.