Hello all, it is my honor to present the artwork and words of Jennifer Ali as the first featured artist of the Elevate: Raising the Arts Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to present artists and their artwork, for them to discuss their inspirations and creative process, fostering awareness of and developing community for the arts. I became aware of Jennifer on social media and was moved by her artwork and how her descriptions revealed a deep thought process and narrative behind her artwork. My thanks to Jennifer Ali for joining in and to you for reading this. - Anthony Lachus
titles:
'Water-death-crown' and
'/ Cenote guardian vs Conquistador'
Bewilderment may be one of the most relieving (and uncomfortable) triggers for surrendering to life. In my creative arts, it's most satisfying to allow these "stops of the breath" to unveil a surrender into ignorance and confusion. Almost all of my work is done through continuous turning and reorientation in order to catch myself unraveling, then reorienting toward a refound center.
In this piece, Water-death-crown, I saw the skull, but worked through each perspective on its own, becoming confused by what I was looking at and what it meant. I try to stay in that unsettled state- I may not find anything. Even if I do see a subject, I still try to release it with every new turn.
The other three titled viewpoints didn't occur to me until after completing the process, when I unify the perspectives and try to visually make sense of them separately and together. At times, the relationships between what I see in each perspective create a new unifying meaning as well, which I may then incorporate into the whole with more paint.
The flipped viewpoint is titled 'Cenote guardian versus Conquistador.' To me, the metaphor is also flipped. A water-death, (whatever that means,) may be crowned in human honor, natural decay, or the inevitable mystery of mortality and afterlife. However, there can also be a crowning of human ego in defense of a spiritual belief, or in the extraction of individuals, humanity, and nature. One can be confused for the other. Contradiction inside each perspective is also a completion.
With this approach, the world of mentation is suddenly tripped. Metaphors and visual fields collapse and expand with each rotation the viewer imagines. Maybe the mind moves toward comparison or contradiction, reaches nowhere, and must surrender to either discomfort or relief by viewing in a new way.
The other two titled orientations are 'Melting into Life' and 'Moses found the fish- again.' I especially like that I used watercolor painted with my fingers to finish the essence of what I found. Being mostly homebound and always dysregulated, I value the ability to let physical sensation—pleasing or painful—lead where there's limited space to move. Using the body to create a momentary resolution to being tripped up has affected all my arts. I write verse as well, and look forward to continuing visual collaborative projects with cross-media artists, especially musicians.
I only know that I know nothing, even when I think I know something. So the next steps seem to appear only when I allow contradiction and confusion to do their work bewildering me.
Water-death-crown
/ Cenote guardian vs Conquistador
Check out Jennifer Ali on X at: