Dutch Baby (Framed)

Jessica Palermo’s work explores the emotions attached to defining life events and their inevitable transience. Motherhood, womanhood, and sexuality are some of the key themes represented through abstract figurations, suggesting the fundamental human process of erasure and reinvention. The combination of Palermo’s gestural brushstrokes and rhythmic layers of colour result in a deliberate union between both the ephemeral and abiding aspects of memory. Jessica has recently been experimenting with the concept of the ‘precious’ and the ‘sentimental’. Her works aim to illustrate that sentimentality however is always a form of self-deception. They delve deeper into retrospection, often more detailed and symbolic in form, eluding to the fact that memory is full of glitches and is curated from our own subjective needs.

"I attempt to focus on what it means to have a body, be out of body, and as both, living inside of a memory of time and place. Since my practice is a confessional one, I want each piece to exude the energy it takes to inhabit the multitude of female identities; virtuous, shameful, maternal, erotic among others, and express their often fraught coexistence through my own perspective, like an emotional landscape." — Jessica Palermo