A Closer Look at Eyes of the Skin by Jen Clay
For the inaugural Project Room exhibition at our new home in Little River, Locust Projects presents Eyes of the Skin, a newly commissioned project by Miami-based artist Jen Clay that invites viewers to explore an alien forest of quilted tree-like creatures through both a site-specific immersive installation and interactive video game animation in which players maneuver to "get out of the woods" while navigating monstrous behavior.
Clay's video game - the first made entirely of animated quilts - is the first chapter in what will evolve into a lengthy visual novel that invites game players to choose their own adventure similar to the 1980s children's game book series. The game and its installation at Locust Projects are designed to create a soothing sensory-inclusive environment with a hypnotic soundscape created by Elise Anderson and dialog made with mental health consultant Tayina Deravile.
Influenced by the theoretical framework of Cosmic Pessimism, a pop culture philosophy of horror, Clay’s monsters are a hybrid of alien and natural forms whose pastel palette and cushioned fabric surfaces distract from an existence that is indifferent and even menacing to human exceptionalism.
Within a decision tree coding structure, player’s avatars can choose from a list of prompts to each manipulative encounter with the trees, who communicate via text on screen. The monsters’ choppy movements recall nineties’ video games and children’s shows. The game’s title refers to Juhani Pallsamaa’s book Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, an architectural theory classic that advocates trusting one’s senses. This nearly therapeutic philosophy echoes positive self-talk Clay adopted as a child who hallucinated monsters. Her work represents that experience and the work of managing it. Clay’s work also helps viewers who have not had this experience to empathize with this condition of near constant uncertainty. Of course, as more and more monsters prove themselves to be all too real, she lets us widen our acceptance, in her work’s soft cuddly embrace, of all that might be.
On the morning of September 23, Locust Projects welcomed more than 150 guests to celebrate the official opening of Eyes of the Skin. The lively event featured an artist talk titled Soft Sanity by Clay, Tania Deravile and Elise Anderson followed by a reception “cuddle” in the artist’s sensory space. Guests enjoyed a waffle bar and brunch beverages as part of a sensory-enveloping experience crafted by the artist featuring unexpected sightings of her hallucinatory monsters come to life from the game … or was it just our imagination playing tricks on us?
On October 21, activations continued with The Chase. Inspired by Scooby doo monster chase scenes, The Chase was a performance where a group of people was slowly chased by two ambiguous forms with a live soundscape by Elise Anderson to represent being constantly chased by the alien inside that, to Jen Clay, is anxiety, depression, and mental illness. Runner groups were sought out to participate in this “fun run” that encircled the street outside of Locust Projects. An eerie live soundscape by Elise Anderson aurally imagined sensations of anxiety and panic experienced by the runners as they were pursued by costumed performers on the empty streets around Locust Projects with audience members cheering the runners on.
In conjunction with Locust Projects’ new program series Locust Late @The Dill, Samuel Lopez De Victoria, who introduced Jen Clay to the software to build the video game Eyes of the Skin, hosted a Tyranobuilder workshop. Artists of any medium or any level of inexperience with animation or video game creation were invited to see how they can include the digital platform into their existing practice.
Eyes of the Skin was funded in part by a Knight New Work Grant awarded to the artist in 2022 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The exhibition’s realization at Locust Projects is presented as part of Knight Digital Commissions with additional major support from Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the NEA, and Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs.
Photos by World Red Eye
Jen Clay was born in 1985 in Mountain View, North Carolina. She received a BFA in Sculpture from University of North Carolina Charlotte and an MFA in Sculpture with a minor in applied behavior analysis and costume design from the University of Florida. Her screenings and performances have been presented at Girls Club Collection, Fort Lauderdale, FL; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; NSU Art Museum, Ft Lauderdale; and Miami Light Box, Miami. Girls Club Collection and Young at Art Museum in Ft. Lauderdale, South Dade Arts Center, and Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach commissioned more complex and immersive multimedia performances. She was a South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellow in 2019. A short segment on her practice, “Jen Clay: The Texture of Anxiety,” won a 2020 regional Emmy through South Florida PBS. She is represented by Emerson Dorsch Gallery.
Jen Clay works in a wide range of media, from quilted wall hangings to interactive and multimedia performances. Drawing from forms familiar to her from personal experiences with mental illness - particularly hallucinations - her elaborately sewn textiles of ambiguous, non-human figures embedded with audio and text messages, make fear, anxiety, and uncertainty approachable. Whether sculpture, performance, and now video games, her works serve as meditations on how uncertainties and fears impact our ability to perceive the world as it is, sometimes forcing suspension of truth to preserve sanity.
Locust Projects 2022-2023 exhibitions and programming are made possible with support from: The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; Diane and Robert Moss; The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, The Children's Trust; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Ruth Foundation for the Arts; Florida, Department of State; The Miami Foundation; Diane and Werner Grob; Susan and Richard Arregui; The Albert and Jane Nahmad Family Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Grant; VIA Art Fund | Wagner Foundation Incubator Grant; Funding Arts Network; Hillsdale Fund;Kirk Foundation; and the Incubator Fund Supporting Sponsors and Friends.