In the age of social media, documenting the minutiae of our daily lives is commonplace if not intuitive. It is not, however, always a flawless gesture nor the algorithms perfect. And it is this particular friction in which Los Angeles native Jasmine Nyende revels. The digital space provides a fertile ground for experimentation and Nyende considers this landscape a prime space for performance. The artist plays with the act of deletion on her social media channels as a way to think through the elasticity of memory and the very boundaries of performance itself. “I started making work out of deleted post because it reminded me of the anxious, friction possible in social media. It's interesting to live in a time where I can do a performance for 4,000 people at anytime anywhere from my phone. I want to understand my relationship to this power by making mistakes, re-inventing myself constantly and not pressuring myself I be perfect,” says Nyende.
Still, this is but one component of Nyende’s multi-media practice which also includes poetry, sculpture, and video work. What remains consistent though across these forms is Nyende’s interest in the storyscapes and physical processes that lead to healing within black communities— in her hometown and elsewhere. In Nyende’s hands, the questions surrounding what we remember, how we remember, and why we become affixed to certain memories allow for the mining the possibilities of self-determination. Often, her own histories are at the center of “My practice is about hybridity and the intuitive forms of creativity for healing. I care deeply about how we learn how to heal, breathe, and honor ourselves under anti-Black capitalism.” Indeed, for Nyende, the personal is political.
