Jazell Manuel

Artist Statement: Jazell is a thoughtful and heartfelt artist who looks for ways to express and connect personal feelings with larger social experiences. Interested in internet and meme culture, she explored the use of .gifs and utilizing simple digital tools such as Google Slides to create compositions that held multiple meanings and cultural artifacts, both personal and cultural. This is where she saw a connection between her interests and LeRoi Johnson’s work. Jazell was drawn to the work’s sometimes cryptic imagery and collage-like approach and endeavored to create her own version in a style she has cultivated. Using sourced .gifs, she created a series of collages that reflected both the personal and more largely felt anxieties that fluctuate in us on a daily basis. Using digital portraits as vessels, she used a sliding door effect to reveal the inner workings and feelings of these subjects lying just beneath the surface. Jazell’s work walks a fine line between traditional imagery and moving images, all while creating captivating subtle spaces for thought.