Jennifer Packer

Jennifer Packer’s bright, loose paintings bristle with political purpose: They critique the privilege of viewership and the ways in which the Black body has been represented and seen throughout history. Her subjects are often Black figures based on the artist’s family or friends, though Packer has also painted floral bouquets, which she has described as funerary. Her canvases resist easy interpretation, and the artist’s languid strokes and tonal color palettes at times blur the division between figure and ground. Packer received her MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University. She has exhibited in New York, Berlin, London, Chicago, São Paulo, and Houston and enjoyed solo institutional shows at the Serpentine Galleries and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Packer participated in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, and her work belongs in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Jimenez-Colon Collection, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.