Jacqueline Arias
About Jacqueline Arias
Jacqueline Arias was born in Costa Rica and raised in southern Ohio. This varied geographical and cultural history has inspired a body of work that combines experimental video, sculpture, new media practices, data visualizations and AI technologies to construct alternative historiographies that address Latinx geopolitical issues around migration and family separation. Arias is an independent director of a feature length documentary film, Imaginary Mothers. In 2018, Arias was awarded a seed grant from Women In Film and Video DC. Arias has been invited to speak about her work and activism at Nogales Museum, Mexico and Loyola University, Maryland. In 2022, Jacqueline was awarded a Border Lab Graduate Fellowship from the Confluence Center for Creative Inquiry at the University of Arizona. Her work was recently selected for the 2024 Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art.
Arias holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art at the University of Arizona and a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Parsons School of Design in NYC. Arias currently serves as adjunct faculty at the University of Arizona, College of Information Science.
Jacqueline Arias
Preferred Pronouns: she/her
ja@jacquelinearias.com
https://jacquelinearias.com/
A Lived Experience
100% cotton rope, paper, responsive video component.
This floor-based sculpture explores the interaction of cotton rope and interactivity. The 100% cotton rope is shredded and laid upon a painted paper base, engaging with the surrounding space. A responsive video component reacts to the observer’s movement, activating a shifting dialogue between the hanging knot and the floor sculpture. The work explores the interplay between human presence, natural fibers, and digital imagery.
A Lived Experience
Lanyard Knot, 8′ x 5′ x 3′ ft
This suspended work, hanging from a pulley system, centers on the lanyard knot, a decorative maritime knot. Oversized 100% cotton rope is tied, partially dismantled, and cut into shreds
Mola Truth Maps
Mola Truth Maps
(Right) Costa Rica to Panama, Mola Unseen Trajectories, 2023
Data Visualization Quilt Designs
Layered cotton quilt
with reverse applique technique
23.5x18
The 3D textiles artisanal quilt designs traditionally worn as protection are a part of my collaboration with the indigenous Guna women artisans in Panama. The visual maps are transformed and activated as an indigenous expression of power. The materiality of the molas represent a material embodiment of indigenous cosmology. The reverse applique layers of fabric represent a spiritual labyrinth which can repel and trap evil spirits within their patterns.
Panama Narratives, 2021
(Left) Single Channel Video/Installation
8:09 min.
An experimental media archeology video, explores the U.S. intervention in the Panama Canal Zone. I use graphic gestures drawn over my personal family archives and a Frederick Wiseman film, Canal Zone (1977) to interrogate the inaccurate utopian vision embedded in these historical depictions of the Panama Canal Zone. These poetic gestures, inspired by Molas, artisanal quilts made by the Guna people of Panama, trace a forgotten boundary built by the U.S. military to divide the occupied territory.
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