Jessica Campbell’s work — satirical drawings, comics, and textiles — is woven from elaborate, humorous, and politically pointed narratives, fitting for an artist who is a well-regarded cartoonist with 2 published graphic novels and another forthcoming. Her narratives often expose everyday experiences that reveal the sexism women have faced throughout history, and presently. Campbell has primarily been using carpet to create figurative works that visually mimic latch hook rugs but deviate from this medium’s precedent in their subject matter, depiction style, and scale. Drawing on a wide range of influences — science fiction, art world politics, ancient Greek myths, evangelical upbringing — Campbell’s worlds reference craft traditions, home decor, and fine art with emphasis on comics. Often using comedic tropes as her subject matter, Campbell sees humour as a tool to help her process what is happening in the world: “I’ve been reconsidering past events in my life that were traumatic that I’ve now mentally recast as funny. Humour can make some trauma bearable.”
Her current body of work, large, brazenly-coloured anthropomorphic figures constructed from collaged carpet scraps of prior projects, is freed from the constraints of the picture plane, references the Gigantomachy, the struggle between the gods and the giants in Greek mythology. These representations were also meant metaphorically, as a depiction of the shift from barbarism to civilized society and victory in specific battles. In a parallel manner, Campbell’s figures, pieced together from scraps embodying immense tension, come to be metaphorical representations of the demons in her mind. The work combines both the tradition of crazy quilts and pareidolia, the experience of ascribing meaning to visual phenomena (like seeing figures in the clouds).
Prior shows have illuminated the life and times of trailblazing Canadian artist Emily Carr in contrast to pivotal moments in Campbell’s life and tackled her (and our) obsession with smart phones, grappling with how this now ubiquitous device changed her life and how it has altered the way our society functions. Her 2023 show at The Fabric Workshop and Museum celebrated and explored the lives of the Heterodites, an iconic first wave feminist club.
Jessica Campbell is a Canadian artist and humourist based in Toronto, working in comics, fibres, painting, drawing and performance. Her Chicago Works show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2018-2019 was reviewed in Art in America, Hyperallergic and Juxtapoz She wrote the July issue of Drawn to MoMA, contributing a comic called Still Alive. She is the author of three graphic novels, RAVE (Drawn and Quarterly, 2022), Hot or Not: 20th Century Male Artists (Koyama Press, 2016) and XTC69 (Koyama Press, 2018). Her comics have appeared in the New Yorker, Hyperallergic and the Nib, among other publications. Her solo and two-person exhibitions include the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Field Projects in NYC, Roots & Culture in Chicago and La Galerie Laroche/Joncas in Montreal. Her work has been included in group shows at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin, the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario, The Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, the ICA in Baltimore, Richard Heller Gallery in LA, moniquemeloche in Chicago, and was included in Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.