Jasmine Murrell
Portrait of Jasmine Murrell
Jasmine Murrell is a Brooklyn-based visual artist that employs several different mediums to create sculptures, painting, photography, performance, installations, and films that blur the line between history and mythology. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally for the past decade, in venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art and Bronx Museum, Museum Contemporary Art Chicago, Whitney Museum, African-American Museum of Art, and International Museum of Photography and untraditional institutions. Works have been included in book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora and New York Times, Time, Hyperallergic, The Detroit Times and several other publications.
Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your work?
Work in a nonlinear art-making process that expands over several years. There are certain overlapping subjects that touch me. I orchestrate an interdisciplinary experience that reflect my artist inquiries.
Dirt sculpture by Jasmine Murrell. Part of an installation.
What are you working on at the moment?
For the past 15 years been very interested in using soil as an antenna to communicate with our ancestors. Working on a few interactive installations that are inspired by interspecies communications of humans and plants.
Can you elaborate on the role of the performers in Immortal Uterus, and how their presence activates the installation?
Each site where the installation of Immortal Uterus was created is never the same and consistently in collaborations with space, the community, and the present moment. The performer/viewer activates the space in various ways including through movement, sound, and light. One installation was activated by the viewer with the accompaniment of wearable sculptures that provided the light for the installation.
What are some references you draw upon in your work? Are there any themes in particular that you like to focus on when creating?
I’m really drawn to the communication and collective memory of things, sites, and abstract forms. I question the hierarchy of different life forms. I think the centering of the human species as the nucleus of life is problematic. For example, if machines have consciousness will that be life? And I ask, what is poison and what is medicine? Henrietta Lack cells came from cancerous tumors, most would think of as poison, yet those cells are living indefinitely helping to save lives. That is ironic, so what is life? And, who has authority to decide what life matters.
Where are some of your favorite spaces that support contemporary art or design? Now that the art has an online presence has that changed?
At the moment I am documenting some of my favorite spaces like The women who Heal, Theater to cure fear located in Guatemala. Indigenous women use theater to heal their community and critique the role of women in patriarchal communities. Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum in Detroit Michigan. Beads have always been a small but powerful symbolic treasure in African Diasporas.
Honestly, I’ve been inspired anywhere but the Amazon is still my favorite place for inspiration for the past 20 plus years.
Detail of installation by Jasmine Murrell.
Do you have any shows coming up? Anything else you would like to share?
I do have an installation coming up in a month in collaboration with a farm in Brownsville, the campaign against hunger. The earthen sculptures will grow food on these massive hands that will extend out of the earth.
Jasmine Murrell’s work is included in our show “Illuminated,” July 9th - Aug. 30th, 2021. Visit her Instagram (@jasminemurrell) and website www.jasminemurrell.com to see more of her work.