ARYEL RENE JACKSON

I WORK LAND 
AND LIGHT


Where others see moving images as windows, I see them as levees–built  lines that hold, guide, and sometimes open to release and renew. For my family, the levee framed several rice fields (visible and distant) that sustained soybeans, rice, and crawfish in turn: crawfish feeding soil, rice and soybean offer shelter to crawfish who burrow. It is a living system of reciprocity–each cycle preparing ground for the next.

My practice follows the same rhythm. One work nourishes another, ideas burrow, and each frame becomes a home for piecing narratives  together. I approach art like a farmer approaches a rice field–not looking to control, rather looking to read, tend, and release at the right time.

Through original and archival footage, and soundscapes rooted in blues traditions, I examine “land” not as a passive backdrop, but as a witness, accomplice, and participant in cycles of labor, memory, and change. My connection to “place” comes from inheriting farming’s complicated legacy–a  home maintained through stitching patterns where holes appear or develop–shaped by environmental realities, and bound to the knowledge that how you tend today shapes notions of futurity.
Moving Image
Exhibitions
 
CURRENT
Soil Futures Observatory  
Wormhole dé ma figur

Across moving image, printmaking, painting, and selective sculpture, the farmer persona cultivates narratives instead of crops–co-mingling soil and environmental forces with a multi-faceted Black archive rooted in rural, urban, and military contexts. This approach reframes farming as an act of composition, where land, climate, and historical memory come together to navigate stories of inheritance, resilience, and possibility.



ARIEL “ARYEL” RENE JACKSON, 2025

INSTAGRAM