night 18

My name is Jennie Kiessling. I like to work beyond standard expectations of presentation and access. night 18 is painted with gouache, drawn with graphite on a surface that is a brown paper shopping bag. The material and structure of my work reference the visual plane of a prayer book c.1930, dedicated to orphans, that was hand-made by my grandfather. My work is intentionally frameless, floating, and transient. Language and our responsibility to choose words carefully is paramount in my work and is often expressed in Italian, Latin, and English. 

After October 7th my work took a turn. It was the beginning of another Israeli-Palestinian war conflict. More specifically, in February, a week before I was to talk on the work I had been creating since October of ’23; further translation of the prayer book revealed 1948 information from the Vatican issuing prayers to be recited for peace, orphans, and refugees of the Nakba. That printed ephemera marked the establishment of the Pontifical Mission for Palestine in Beirut. The work I had started immediately after October 7th, at the time unbeknownst to me, was part of a 75 year response to the horror that moved my grandfather to prayer and consequently, me, to create a visual language, 75 years later, based on bearing witness to genocide.