Jess Atieno Ounga


Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Printmedia

My practice is informed by inquiries on the histories of labour and commodity as seen through the lens of the post-colonial. I especially focus on the critical re- narrativizing of these stories through historical materials such as photographs, maps and documents to reconstruct the past and inspire new strategies of representation in my work. Born and raised in Kenya, I carry in me the inscriptions of a colonized past and it is ever important to have that history reconfigured and told outside the colonial lens and registers of western aesthetics today. I therefore work constantly in parallax, looking to the past to fashion my view of the present.