Jenna Burchell

Jenna Burchell is an anti-disciplinary artist whose practice emanates from her desire to activate otherwise banal spaces and create immersive sensory experiences. Her methodology transpires into interactive sculptures, large scale installations and performance and body art that present transient moments of exchange between unpredictable human interactions, meticulous technological innovation and art.

Often taking on a biomimetic aesthetic, executed with the minimalism of the Bauhaus philosophy (function before form); motion sensored light wetlands and touch sensitive audial copper forests, Burchell’s works draw into question the familiar and unfamiliar. Her process involves and connects communities, places and countries around the world. Stemming from her personal experience of living in a diasporic family, her work revolves around notions of home, memory, land and cultural belonging. The environments created invite the spectator to further examine these notions and the technological means through which relations are formed and maintained in our zeitgeist.

Jenna Burchell attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, 2007. She has been the recipient of the Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Award (2011), Arteles Art Residency in Finland (2012), Ithuba Arts Fund (2013) and the Soundlands Public Art Commission in Bangor, Wales (2015) . She has had travelling solo exhibitions, exhibited in international institutions such the Smithsonian National Museum, and in art fairs such as Art15 London and the FNB Joburg art fair. Burchell is represented in the University of South Africa (UNISA) and Spier Art Collections as well as private and corporate collections.