Yurshansky Jenny

About

enny Yurshansky is an American artist born stateless in Rome, passing through Soviet-era Moldova. She received an MFA in Visual Arts from UC Irvine and an MA in Critical Studies from Malmö Art Academy. In 2020, she will have a solo exhibition at Platt and Borstein Galleries at American Jewish University and is the first artist-in-residence with a solo exhibition at Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles, and also the first alumni artist-in-residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. In 2019, Yurshansky received the City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship, along with an exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. She had a solo exhibition at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, and was part of the exhibition "A NonHuman Horizon" at Contemporary Exhibitions Los Angeles. In 2018, Pitzer College Art Galleries published her artist book, and she was an artist-in-residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. In 2016, she was an artist-in-residence at Arts Initiative Tokyo and was invited by Yiddishkayt to travel as a visiting artist to Moldova, where she began research into her family history there. In 2014, she was the first artist-in-residence at Pitzer College Art Galleries, followed in 2015 by her solo exhibition in the Emerging Artist series, curated by Ciara Ennis. In 2015, she was also a visiting researcher artist at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, which she concluded with a solo exhibition. In 2012, she was a visiting resident artist for the Odor Water Limo exhibition in Northern Norway. In 2010, Yurshansky was the first international artist to be awarded the Maria Bonnier scholarship at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm. Yurshansky has also participated in group exhibitions at Bonniers Konsthall, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Laguna Art Museum, MAK Center and LAXART, Torrance Art Museum, Armory Center for the Arts, the 7th Istanbul Biennial, Hammer Museum, Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art in Malmö, and the Toyota Museum. She has received numerous artist and curator grants. She is a co-founder of Persbo Studio, an artist residency, sculpture park, and creative space in Sweden. Jenny Yurshansky is an artist whose practice is deeply informed by refugee status. Using material and critical parameters defined by a conceptual and research-based approach, she explores the trauma of displacement by interrogating notions of belonging and otherness through place, historical traces, and social constructions, often formally manifested as absence, loss, or erasure. Her work includes writing and working with a variety of materials such as cast, slumped, and found glass, charred steel, MDF manipulated to simulate antique display cases, embroidered textiles, hand-cut paper plant silhouettes, laser-etched granite, and photographic installations. Yurshansky uses her life experiences as a twice-immigrant, first as a refugee in the US and then as an immigrant in Sweden for 11 years, to explore displacement and the experience of xenophobia, and to connect with others with these histories. The notion of otherness, a constant theme in her work, developed from living as a third-culture person. Ultimately, her aim is to create discourse through narratives, whether based on sculpture, photography, installation, or writing. These are the stories of generations of migrants. The development of these works involves a process of intensive investigation through interviews, research, and site visits, to bring nuance and care to the themes and subjects, ensuring that the stories she tells and their reception deepen understanding and awareness.