Ariana Jacob (Portland, OR) makes artwork that uses conversation as medium and as a subjective research method. Her work explores experiences of interdependence and disconnection, questions her own idealistic beliefs, and investigates how people make culture and culture makes people. She received her MFA in Art & Social Practice from Portland State University. Her work has been included in the NW Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum, Disjecta’s Portland 2012 Biennial, The Open Engagement Conference and the Discourse and Discord Symposium at the Walker Art Center.
NS Residency: August 2013
Windsor’s Unemployed Help Centre
As an NS Artist-in-residence at Windsor’s Unemployed Help Centre, Ariana Jacob will be investigating people’s different experiences of work and lack of work and how it affects their sense of self. Drawing on Studs Terkel’s classic book, “Working” this project revisit his approach to the role work has in our lives considering how much more precarious work conditions have become since Stud’s 1970s. Our relationship to work has had to change to deal with an increasingly globalized economy and far less stable job possibilities for most people. We now expect multiple career shifts within our lifetimes, and we brace ourselves for high unemployment and the threat of downward mobility across the first world. And yet, we still regularly ask each other, “ what do you do?” meaning what is your job, and define people accordingly. This project explores the basic realities of what people do for work these days, the place work has in their lives, and how contemporary work and economic realities are affecting how we understand ourselves.
The American Society for Personally Questioning Political Questions, 2012
View Ariana’s work at: www.publicwondering.com