Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries
66 Fifth Ave
Parsons School of Design

(under)REPRESENT(ed) is an exhibition that features Parsons alumni of color whose creative practices explore the lived experience of race and aim to dismantle systems of racism.


Sara Jimenez, MFA Fine Arts ’13

Sara Jimenez is a multi-disciplinary Filipina-Canadian artist, currently living and working in New York. Through performance, installation, sculpture, and drawing, she investigates relationships between material impermanence and transcultural memory. Throughout her projects, she is interested in complicating and reimagining existing narratives around concepts of home, absence, and origins.

Jimenez received her BA from the University of Toronto (2008) and her MFA from Parsons School of Design (2013). Residencies include Brooklyn Art Space (2014), Wave Hill’s Winter Workspace (2015), a full artist fellowship to The Vermont Studio Center (2016), and the Bronx Museum’s AIM program (2016). Jimenez has exhibited at the Pinto Art Museum (Philippines), Rush Arts Gallery (NY), BRIC Gallery, FiveMyles Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, and Wayfarers Gallery (NY), among others. She has performed numerous venues including The Noguchi Museum, Dixon Place, and Smack Mellon. Most recently, Jimenez exhibited at the Bronx Museum as part of the AIM Biennial.


Fata Morgana (Clan)

Sara Jimenez, MFA Fine Arts ’13
2017
Digital C-prints with mixed media

2017, Digital C-prints with mixed media, “Fata Morgana (Clan) is a series of scanned and printed photos from an American colonial text called ‘Our Islands Their People’ (1899). Each chapter of the text focuses on a colony of the U.S. Within this work, I used images from the chapter on the Philippines. I am interested in decontextualizing the original photos, and shifting assumptions through removing information and masking the bodies. The background of the images reveals the staged settings and the European influence. The work is arranged in various combinations, creating new relationships and groupings with each iteration.”

Would you describe your career path as typical? Why or why not?

My career path is not completely typical because my undergraduate degree was not in Fine Arts.

In what ways have your identities impacted your education and career paths?

My identities - being in between multiple cultural and racial constructs - has completely informed my art practice. It has led me to collaborations with specific artists of color and has informed the histories and content that I research and study.

What advice would you share with current Parsons students?

Form community in a way where you can actively share and explore ideas with one another. Take action with your community.

Posted in Artists.