Born in 1984 in Treaty 6 Territory (Edmonton, Alberta), Jessica Slipp is a visual artist currently living and working in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang (Montréal, Québec). Her artistic practice draws upon photography, video, performance, and print-based media to uncover new perspectives of landscape by looking more deeply into the intricacies of existence. At its core, her work explores the interlaced & intrinsic connection we all share with the physical world—from the particles that randomly compose it, to the very nature that in fact, we embody.

The work that Jessica will be developing while at Centre SAGAMIE focuses on how dot patterns, or printed “matter”, is a metaphor for the atoms and molecules that form existence as we understand it. Drawing inspiration from an Annie Dillard essay titled, Seeing, Jessica is using abstracted landscape photos to refer to the purest moment of sight or perception, described as shadowy blobs and colour patches, or “pure sensation unencumbered by meaning”. Using the working title, A Hidden Sky Lit by a Sun Halfway, she refers to the interconnectivity of everything — the subtle net of relationships that stretch across the universe, or the sky.

Jessica holds a BFA in Photography (2012) and MFA in Print Media (2019) from Concordia University. She has presented work in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, has received several awards including an Explore & Create grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and has participated in residencies in the US and Canada. She is currently showing a multi-channel video piece as part of the group exhibition, Panic Room: Pièces de survie, at La Galerie de l'Université de Montréal (showing until November 15th).