Nicole Donnely
Jazmine Catasus
Jazmine Catasús is an artist and educator primarily working with print and papermaking. She is currently an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a BA from CUNY-Hunter College. She was trained as a papermaker at Pace Paper and Dieu Donné Papermill. Jazmine has taught printmaking and papermaking workshops at several institutions, including: Dieu Donné, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, International Print Center of New York, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Noguchi Museum. Her work has been exhibited nationally. She is currently the Artist in Residence at the Bard Graduate Center Library and serves on the Board of Hand Papermaking Inc.
Artist Statement
The elements of process and materiality are paramount to my practice. My ritual lies in the reconstruction of material and involves a series of deliberate, intentional choices that I make which connect my ideas with the haptic experience of the material. The materials I work with, act as a vehicle that allows me to explore the modalities that evolve between the sacred and the profane in response to the social climate and the discourse on identities (i.e racial, ethnic, gender, religious). Specifically drawing from my Afro-Caribbean background, recurring images and symbols such as the door-knocker earring or vevé can be seen throughout my work. These symbols are culturally specific and store a collective memory. I perceive identities as being ever-changing, constantly developing, and elastic. I disassemble and then recompose these symbols into a new visual vocabulary, underscoring my belief that these symbols aren’t static but eternally unfolding.