Jennifer Mannebach: You Never Held It At The Right Angle

Jennifer Mannebach’s work addresses remnants, boundaries and transition. She has exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center, Flatfile Gallery and others, nationally and internationally. In 2006 she was a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome. Mannebach received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she subsequently taught for 6 years. She is currently an art facilitator at Little City Foundation and an Artist/Researcher with CAPE. Awards include: Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, CAAP grants, IAC grants, and the Governor’s International Arts Exchange Grant. Recent exhibits include STRIKE/SLIP at the Freeark Gallery in Riverside, IL (curator), One or the Other Must Be Blurred at the Jack Olson Gallery at NIU, and participation in the Terrain Biennial as a super host and exhibiting artist. Upcoming events include a residency with PLAYA and an exhibit at Governor’s State University.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work focuses on the borders and edges of where things collect, and the relationships between what happens on either side of these demarcations. I’ve been fascinated by the advent of genetic engineering technologies like CRISPR Cas9 as a cogent parallel to the longstanding themes in my work that examines fragments and boundaries conceptually and physically. I often conflate the architecture of the interior body and the broader views of world maps and constructed barriers, incorporating the vibrant hues and intense chroma of the colored gels used in microscopic visualization. Replacing even a snippet of information to redirect a protein creates a chain of events; likewise, the removal of a community, however small, reverberates into future generations, as does changing the location or character of a boundary between countries or even neighborhoods. Most recent work speaks to aspects of touch and connection, questioning the nature of boundaries and relationships between material identities. Materials find a home with each other, but always with a looming tectonic shift. Lately I’m thinking about how a sense of rupture and disorientation can be an opportunity to be more carefully attentive.