Lisa Jarrett
We are incredibly excited to announce the representation of Portland, Oregon based artist Lisa Jarrett!!!
Lisa Jarrett photographed by Sam Gehrke
Lisa Jarrett (she/her) is an artist working in social and visual forms. Her intersectional practice considers the politics of difference within a variety of settings including: schools, landscapes, fictions, racial imaginaries, studios, communities, museums, galleries, walls, mountains, mirrors, floors, rivers, and prisms. She recently discovered that her primary medium is questions; the most urgent of which is: What will set you free?
She is co-founder/director of projects like KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art); the Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice in NE Portland, OR; and Art 25: Art in the 25th Century.
Lisa exists and makes work within the African Diaspora. She lives in Portland, Oregon where she co-authors social practice projects and continues her 14+ year investigation into Black hair and its care in various forms. She is Associate Professor of Community and Context Arts at Portland State University's School of Art + Design where she teaches classes in Art + Social Practice.
Migration Studies no. 22 tenderheaded, hair woven through Kozo paper
Melhop Gallery º7077 first worked with Lisa Jarrett in connection with the FAR BEYOND THE WALLS exhibition in the decommissioned Nevada State Prison in 2024. Lisa installed her solo exhibition Off Record in the Barber’s Cell. She wrote: “My practice has long considered the politics of difference across space and time. In the ongoing series Migration Studies, I continue to explore migratory systems and streams and the way that it forms (or is conversant with) Black femininity’s relationship to hair and beauty routines. Migration, forced or chosen, has been a defining force in the formation of Black identities. In the Migration Studies project Black hair and the attendant products and rituals are my primary materials. I often engage these materials to trace lost histories and homelands and to chart future trajectories. Which is to say the work is actively constructing future narratives reliant on Black life today. I often think about “migration” and its relationship to narratives about liberation and freedom. I also consider it in terms of vast possibilities for a Black body to re-situate itself across space and time. However, in the context of women incarcerated within the US prison-industrial complex physical migration is limited by both space and time. How then does Black hair perform on the inside? What shapes our beauty with limited access to resources for care like the Beauty Supply and salon? What knowing do we carry with us and how does it keep us safe? What hair rituals existed for Black women incarcerated at the Nevada State Prison and how do they echo our collective migratory journeys? This work is a monument to those women in recognition of the tenderness and care that most certainly was present in addition to whatever else.”
Lisa Jarrett installation OFF RECORD, woven hair forming impossible escape plans at Far Beyond the Walls 2024
Detail of the Lisa Jarrett installation OFF RECORD, woven hair forming impossible escape plans at Far Beyond the Walls 2024
Detail of the Lisa Jarrett installation OFF RECORD, woven hair forming impossible escape plans at Far Beyond the Walls 2024
Welcome to the Melhop Gallery º7077 artist roster Lisa Jarrett!
Find out more about Lisa and her work on her artist page here