Jewel - Matriclysm (Exhibition Overview)

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]The show is called matricism. It explores [music] feminine memory.

[00:00:04]There are three pieces that represent undiluted feminine power, and then the rest of the show really [music] explores the unraveling. On a global scale and on a really deeply personal [music] scale.

[00:00:16]Heart of the ocean is one of three works that represent undiluted feminine power, and in [music] this form it represents the ocean, the great womb from which all souls were birthed.

[00:00:28]To be able [music] to do this, I created an 8-ft tall work that has 60,000 points of programmable light. It has a sound vocabulary [music] and a computer in its base. That computer is connected to satellites, wave sensors, all kinds of data [music] starts coming through the sculpture, and that data in real time [music] is what creates the light and the sound.

[00:00:52]First Mother [music] is a collaboration with a South African artist named Patrick Bongoy. It was really important to me to make this piece not [music] only with a man, because for me that means it's a healing, it's a mending, it's a man and a woman coming together to restore the feminine.

[00:01:08]But it was also important to be with a South African [music] man, because we can each trace our feminine history back to a single [music] woman. She's known as Mitochondrial Eve, and she was in Africa.

[00:01:21]Seven Sisters is a data-driven light and sound [music] sculpture. It's seven glass orbs that represent the seven stars of the Pleiades. [music] And the actual light fluctuation and sound fluctuation is driven by the actual light wave form [music] of each star.

[00:01:38]I tracked down the physicist that was able to measure the individual light signature of each star, and it's that data point >> [music] >> that allows each star to sing and to glow.

[00:01:49]Earth Arc Celestial Arc is a 5-ft [music] tall stainless steel sculpture, and it represents a teaching that is believed [music] to have been passed down from the seven sisters. It has survived hundreds of years. And the teaching is about being able to draw up the energy from the earth from our legs and draw the celestial energy through our arms to [music] be able to remind us that we are anchored on this earth through these two forces.

[00:02:16]Ceremony is a four-part painting [music] series. It's oil. What I did is imagine all the matriarchs in my [music] family lineage going backwards through time and forwards through time. And it's really exploring feminine memory. It's exploring women as teachers.

[00:02:33]It's exploring menopause and women as they age. And also takes a look at what is [music] sacred, what used to be sacred, what is now taboo. There are these pop culture items as well as items that are more historic that are lodged in this tree of life that grow out of these women's head and then collectively begin to tell [music] a broader story.

[00:02:54]Mother Thread is a diptych. It is a portrait of me and a portrait of my son [music] because I couldn't talk about feminine energy without talking about my own personal journey as a mother.

[00:03:05]Fertile Ground is a four-part series where I use my own face and [music] talk about my relationship to my body and therefore I'm sort of projecting out the relationship all women have with their bodies when it comes to hormones, when it comes to birth control, when it comes to the [music] ability to say when you're pregnant or not. And as liberating as that is, it also comes with so many complications and disconnection at the same time.

[00:03:34]Throughout the show, there are different icons or symbols that repeat over and over. You see them in the purse behind me. They are embedded into the body of the first mother sculpture. They are in the paintings. And finally, in the artifact series, [music] we see them as individual objects.

[00:03:53]Pretty Deadly is one of the most complicated objects in the show and it collapses two competing narratives into a single object. On one hand, it is girlish and feminine and pretty and looks like an accessory.

[00:04:08]And on the other, it has a [music] potent kill factor.

[00:04:12]It really challenges this idea of what is feminine, what is safe, and how are we safe in the world? This girl on fire is a large-scale tapestry [music] and it defies one single reading. On one hand, it's about a woman who is trying to do it all. I kind of call it the modern witch hunt. We're supposed to be these perfect, incredible women that are the perfect moms, the perfect wives, the perfect boss babe. But that's a setup.

[00:04:38]You can't be perfect at all things and so a lot of women constantly feel like failures.

[00:04:44]It also really represents um the earth.

[00:04:47]You know, she's wearing a green suit.

[00:04:48]It's this blue linoleum floor representing the ocean and she's on fire. Our earth isn't doing well. And the whole show being about this feminine principle, you know, when we lose the connection to the feminine aspects of our own personalities, whether you're a man or a woman, you're losing the ability to connect, to nurture. And that extends itself out where not only you're not connecting to self or community, but also not to the planet.

[00:05:17]Touches your trembling fear, reflects your joy, like a mirror.