We recently connected with Jenna Arvelo and have shared our conversation below.

Jenna, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I would change so much of the established model of education we have today. Most of us are in agreement that the educational system specifically in the US have been declining in value in terms of critical thought, skill building and a true telling of history and the ways of the world. We see this in the increasing list of banned books, the erasure of black history in discourse and the overall goal to push students to the margins of passing exams and nothing more than that. So our expectations for our students today are to be nothing more than good workers. Our society needs much more than that. We need visionaries and empathetic leaders who exemplify new ways of thinking about a more just and equitable world.

Jenna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a visual artist from New Jersey, who’s practice is based in New York. I began my career in 2016 when creating a series titled ‘American Girl’. These were portraits of young women of color in my age group. I focused mostly on young women of the Caribbean diaspora. I was exploring this idea of American identity especially as a young girl who’d played with American Girl dolls; and whose father is a first generation immigrant from Haiti. I saw relevance in the stories of immigrants and the generations of children that built their own stories outside of their mother lands. Representation was nothing new at this time, yet was heightened as the art world began to slowly shift towards the inclusivity of at least the images of people of color on their walls. Today my practice consists of mostly self portraits, a series I began in 2018 as a means to commune with the inner worlds of selfhood. As a human with a multitude of layers, I sought to mirror back to others their own potential, as multiplicity exists in all of us. I think I’m most proud of this body of work in particular because it’s allowed me to evolve past anything I could’ve conceived otherwise. It has also connected me even closer to humanity as exploring the intricacies of consciousness of self always leads back to the collective. The work I wish to make for the world is still revealing itself to me, but I do know it must acknowledge the state of the world as it is, and it must also provide a new vision of an untapped future; acknowledging all of facets of humanity as part of it.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

There are many lessons that I had to unlearn as I began navigating the art world. One of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn is that I had to wait for opportunities to come to me; that I had to be invited to have a seat at these tables. But in reality these seats are only available to an exclusive group of individuals who are meticulously indoctrinated into specific art institutions. As a result space for artists can be scarce and limited. But in reality we get to collectively create our own opportunities, whether that looks like melding communities and establishing a table to share with others. Success doesn’t have to be an individualistic rat race.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I received a lot of rejections being in my field. It’s something I’ve felt a lot of shame around and it’s stopped me from expanding my practice at certain points in my career. But regardless the art I had inside me still needed to be made in spite of all this rejection I was perceiving. So my resilience lies in my defiance to give up my love of painting in the face of all the no’s.

Contact Info:

• Website: JennaArvelo.com
• Instagram: @jenna.arvelo

Image Credits
Jenna G Arvelo