Eight, Four Five is Jessica Mairena’s exploration of trauma and psychology through conceptual drawings, as affected by the precariousness of the digital sphere. The traveling of the images via e-mail have continuously distorted the image, undoing the calculated and tedious manner in which traumas and unruly emotions have been walled off. There is an inherent failure to the images–our efforts to contain our traumas are constantly thwarted by chance encounters, the glitch of the lived experience. “I don’t know why some things don’t have places” is the mantra of the work, combining a desire to contain one’s emotions with its impossibility. The internet is a vital to the work, in that it is the variable that unravels a functional map, producing a tool that is more aesthetic than functional. Mairena’s images put these psychological tools to the test via the glitch, revealing the architectural seams of our closely-constructed psyches.
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Jessica Mairena is a mixed media artist who currently attends the University of Richmond. Their work primarily focuses on the exploratory integration of conceptual texts, painting, and sculpture.
