Deena Jacobs combines painting, drawing, and collected ephemera to create cognitive landscapes. Pieces are fluid and connected, an ongoing series captures fragmented memories and documents liminal space. Ephemeral and intermittent; Like the rivers and streams, the wetlands, connected even when not present.

Shaped by years of chaos and calm, moving internationally and resettling into new spaces. A sculptural practice became fragmented, pieces had to be packable, less fragile, less cumbersome. Developing a style that is playful and melancholic, with specifics skewed by layering techniques. The work is transparent and opaque, detailed multimedia work blurring time and boundaries. Shifting forms, recognizable symbols, and shapes are distorted through the patient application.

Deena creates work that documents a life that not wanting to be erased, acknowledges the precarious nature of this existence, determination, and resilience as resistance. Into music, nature, and the specific stains we leave behind. Exploring themes of identity, community, joyful resistance, action-based reactions, and processing trauma.

Empathetic to the way an individual’s interpretation through their own semiotics and perspectives affect how the work is viewed. The work intentionally shifts its natural focus in different lighting, the details coming to light. This openness is exciting and is encouraged, as part of an ongoing dialogue. Time spent with the work, similarly to time with the person, reveals more details, out of context but linked.

Back in Canada long-term and planning projects that recall sculptural and site-specific installation methods previously used. Hoping to add carpentry and stained glass techniques as an extension of the current work being created.

Having graduated from York University in 2008 with a Fine Arts BA, Deena Jacobs has since exhibited work in Canada and abroad, and contributed to UK publications.