Jenifer Bardi

BFA Painting

ARTIST STATEMENT: My work is deeply involved in memory, in sentiment, and in vaguely lined connections and phrases—loose thoughts and compartmentalized memories of old and new. In recording these lapses of recollection, I construct new wooden spaces in which they may reside; I am working on lulling myself to some sort of rest, blurring edges and softening remembrances until I deem them safe enough to confront for a second time. I’m fine with whittling the past down to be consumed. It’s mine, after all. I’m just making it visually indistinguishable to anyone aside from myself.

There are no romanticizing gestures—just symbols—the most common being scraps of tape, bandages, and hands. They blend into childlike colors and scribbles, but are also created with obsessive detail. I like to play around with what is real and what is absolutely obscure, collaging together images into nondescript environments resembling that of distant dreamscapes. Similarly, my work is not about avoidance and censorship for the sake of my own comfort, but is much rather concerned with fragmentation and the redesign of individual memories that will always remain the same—even if washed over with a layer of powder blue.