About

Artist Statement

Influenced by the oral history of her family’s arrival in the U.S from Mexico and Catholic upbringing, Aquino transforms found objects, family photographs, and cultural objects like cornhusks, into personal relics and mementos. Aquino’s process includes breaking and reassembling these objects to mirror the fragmented nature of cultural and familial memory. The act of collaging materials allows her to create abstract forms of memoir, portraiture, and nonlinear storytelling.

When stories and memories are retold over time, or when photographs disappear, or family members pass away, there is a sudden urgency to capture and preserve family recipes or record voices. Aquino collects familial ephemera to connect the indigenous and colonial past, present, and future. This often leads her to forge her own mythologies, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. As a child of immigrants, she constructs these in-between-worlds that help bridge the divide created by migration and displacement, honoring and celebrating her roots while navigating her place in a new cultural landscape of belonging.

Bio
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Jessica Elena Aquino is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and horticulturist from Santa Ana, California, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a B.A. from Colgate University and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (VA), Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (MI), Creative Alliance (MD), and Anna Zorina Gallery (NYC), among others.

Aquino was recently an Artist-in-Residence as a Windgate Fellow at the University of Arkansas–Fort Smith, and she will begin a Printmaking Fellowship at Manhattan Graphics Center in Summer 2025. Her past residencies include the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, Chautauqua School of Art, Textile Arts Center, and the Chrysalis Institute. She is a recipient of the Murray Dessner Travel Grant, which supported her research in natural dyeing and tapestry weaving in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico.
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Jessica has presented visiting artist talks at Rowan University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Haverford College. Alongside her studio practice, she has worked in arts education and horticulture at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PAFA, and the Museum of Modern Art.