bio

Jennifer Bastian creates objects and experiences related to the labor of parenting, grieving, and making community.

Bastian received her BFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MA and MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was a finalist for the Women’s Forward Fund Forward Art Prize in 2022, and her 2021 work "I have missed you (Community Care is the Intimacy I Need)" was included in the 2022 Wisconsin Biennial at the Museum of Wisconsin Art and given an Award of Merit from Wisconsin Visual Artists. Bastian will be the Thurber Park Artist in Residence in Madison for 2024-2026.

View CV here.

I am an autistic, queer and disabled artist and mother. I have always known when a photograph’s composition was good, or if a small sculpture was complete, though I could not explain it in conceptual art terms. After chronic illness symptoms escalated during my pregnancy in 2019, I began connecting with the disability justice community. Through their shared knowledge, I learned that my art practice was a complex support system for my disabilities and neurodivergence. 

All of my current bodies of work focus on grief, love, self discovery, and ritual. I explore these themes through quilt and fibers work, meditative photographs, and an obsession with candle-lighting and melted wax. 

Since the death of my second mother in 2022, I have had revelations around repressed trauma from my childhood and connected it to challenging patterns in my adult life, as well as the world around me. This has allowed me to find words to express the intentions of my practice more directly. It’s also made it impossible for me to ignore pain inside of myself and its connection to the global atrocities I see daily.

Through all of my processes of making, I create objects and experiences that resonate with the human yearning for safety and acceptance. I want to break cycles of harm within my family and community by introducing imagery and statements reminding us that the world can be different. Each of us has the responsibility to try to make it happen.