Red Passage by Jenna Arvelo

‘Red Passage’, 2023 Oil on primed canvas, velvet 72×56 inches

Using the art of divination, I created a series of paintings asking my deck of cards, what messages and images wanted to be seen at that moment in time. This painting in particular had a prominent boat, a hawk, a cat and a body of water represented by the color red. Given the information from the cards, I interpreted its meaning as a transition into the afterlife. Using signifiers from my personal life this painting beckons a story of a passage from violence and turbulence towards the unknown.

My practice concerns itself with what connects me to forgotten pasts, current events and a rapidly unfolding future. Building from the archive of scattered stories of my ancestors. I create small to large scale paintings, activating symbols from both my Haitian and African American spiritual heritage; bridging a symbolic language amongst these specific diasporas. Rising from an acute need to understand this melded identity, I give myself space to define for myself. Leaving what western, Eurocentric society has conditioned our collective to believe of the vast spectrum that is black culture. I paint self portraits as a means to explore this innate multiplicity of selfhood, whilst also allowing a return to ancestral knowing; connecting with the divine and spirit. Using the art of divination and card reading, I commune through these paintings, as it becomes its own site for sacredness, ritual and communion. Building into its own dialect of a mystic language of symbols. 

Jenna Arvelo is a Haitian-American Newark based artist, with a practice based in surreal modes of painting and imagery. Arvelo uses her paintings as a medium to project her inner world of self reflection and discovery using her own body as lead figures in her compositions. Her practice having been irrevocably tied with self care, personal experience and the practice of her spiritual heritage; is not a political statement in itself; yet is not limited to the experiences of living within the political battleground as both black and a woman. With concepts heavily influenced and saturated in symbolism and spirituality; these paintings become more of the act of praying, channeling and creating safe spaces for inner worlds to exist beyond the boundaries and limitations of the political self.