​Jessica Elena Aquino (she/they) is a fiber interdisciplinary artist, educator, and poet from Santa Ana, CA currently based in Brooklyn. Aquino uses improvisational weaving, sculpture, and the use of childhood & cultural objects to navigate her (dis)connection to familismo, home, love, land, and labor. Aquino intertwines poetry, plant dyeing, and biographical & historical research, to provide a space of healing. She sits in discomfort in unweaving forms of heartache, intergenerational trauma and finding catharsis by working with the earth itself. 

Jessica Elena Aquino (b.1991) earned her B.A in Painting from Colgate University in 2014 and an MFA at the PA Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019. Her work has been exhibited at Da Vinci Art Alliance, PA Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Creative Alliance, Baltimoire, MD; Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI and Anna Zorina Gallery, NY.  She was an Artist in Residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Textile Arts Center, Chautauqua School of Art and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Aquino has won numerous awards such as the Alumni Council Award, Murray Dessner Travel Grant. She has given visiting artist lectures at Rowan University and Carnegie Mellon University. Aquino has a background in horticulture and education working for the PA Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Museum of Modern Art, in Manhattan, NY.