RAIR | 2024-25

Jennifer Sirey

Jennifer Sirey was born in Brooklyn, NY. Her sculpture engages organic materials and natural phenomena, incorporating glass, liquids, wax, bacteria, algae, wood, metal, and found objects in monolithic forms. For years, she has been refining a process of growing Acetobacter, or "Mother of Vinegar," to construct living sculptures. She holds a BFA from The School of Visual Arts in NY and is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow. Select exhibitions include Feature Inc., Klaus Von Nichtssagend, Helena Anrather, Ceysson & Bénétière, Derek Eller, NY. Jennifer is featured in the Spring 2022 issue of BOMB Magazine. Her sculpture is included in the permanent collection at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA, and the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, New Mexico.

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“My sculptures are both architecture and viscera. I collaborate with the fermentation culture acetobacter, known as the mother, that exist in colonies throughout the natural world. Rigid glass tanks establish logical structures where fleshy planes, blown glass, and wax forms are suspended. Meticulous parameters are set for substances to behave naturally as the sculptures literally grow into themselves. The works contain worlds that are also extracorporeal bodies. Each piece stands elevated and exposed, torpid and alive... presenting the inside to the outside.

A common cliche, "beauty is on the inside," makes me think, "what's it like on the inside? "triggering a search through iterations of inner structures. By compartmentalizing growth, I mend disconnection and transcend trauma. Glass jars and tubes invade and penetrate the sculpture's already see-through skin. In some works, molten wax is poured and set inside a tilted glass tank on the surface of water, then removed and cast into metal. Training viscera into geometric form allows me to create balance and renewal.

Pedestals and thrones elevate and display mortal and immortal greatness. My pedestals are process driven, like the inside of the vitrines they support. Paper pulp forms are embedded into wood bases like open wounds and secret codes. On stages, tanks of microbial overgrowth and wax-on-water events are the displayed objects of admiration, questioning our ideas of beauty. Bacterial slabs are sanguine.”