Baby, [Hackers] are we, 2021
Sci-Fi Narratives and Historical Echoes
2024
Works include a multi-channel video installation, textured paintings, and sculptural forms that evoke themes of landscape, dwelling, and environmental change, inviting reflection on the intersections of place, history, and imagination.
iterations of a welcoming place
2023–2024
- HOST: Aryel René Jackson was on view from September 28. 2023 to January 28. 2024 at the Jones Center.
- In this commissioned installation titled “What it means: iterations of a welcoming place,” Jackson works across sculpture, video, sound, and performance to explore landscape as a site of personal representation. The work inhabits a space between painting and sculpture, between abstraction and representation, forming an imagined topography that merges figural imagery with geographic elements.
2020–2022
- Solo exhibition at Women & Their Work (Jan 18–March 3, 2022). The film-based installation combined recorded conversations with Black and Brown Indigenous residents of Austin with re-animated archival footage, including meteorological imagery and scenes of community life.
- Jackson appears holding a black weather balloon, using it as a metaphor for gauging a place’s atmosphere. The work weaves personal testimony, place-based observation, and archival material to reflect on how communities experience and respond to environmental and social conditions.
[Hackers] are we
2021
- A Tito’s Prize exhibition at Big Medium by artists Aryel “Ariel” René Jackson and Michael J. Love, performing as their alter egos Confuserella and Babé. The project imagined a Black futuristic location where wormholes connect past and present, blending personal research, rhythm tap dance, and multi-camera documentation.
2021
The film is supported by original music by Jazz composer Joseph C. Dyson Jr., whose score underscores the choreography and temporal weight of the soil-flag transformation. Additionally, the pool design was executed by Eto Otitigbe, whose minimalist interventions intersect the stenciled flag as a permanent backdrop to the ephemeral nature of soil.
Grandma never believed in hell
2019
During performances, collaborators Aryel “Ariel” René Jackson and Michael J. Love sweep soil into circles, tap dance on the surface, and move earth from the bucket, creating visual patterns and rhythmic sounds. The work combines sculpture, soil drawings, and live action, blending references to classrooms, yards, and ceremonial spaces.
24 x 72 x 30
Ruby City (2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon) family chair, flag poles, broom corn, cement, soil, chalk, paint on wall.
2019
In 2021, the work was featured in “Lux Aeterna” at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, University of Washington, curated by Emily Zimmerman and organized in partnership with Northwest Film Forum. In 2023, it received the Juried Award in the Time-Based category at ArtPrize, presented by juror Coka Treviño. In the same year, it was included as part of “This Place We Once Remembered” curated by Rachel Gugelberger in collaboration with Gabriel de Guzman at Wave Hill in the Bronx, NY. Across these presentations, the work has been adapted for different sites and audiences, taking the form of live performance, projected video, and installation. Watch an excerpt here.
2019
The work was included in “In Practice: Other Objects” at SculptureCenter, an exhibition curated by Gee Wesley in 2019, exploring how the lives of objects extend beyond their immediate function or context. The show gathered artists whose work examines the shifting status of material things, considering how objects can be repurposed, reimagined, or reactivated as vessels of history, narrative, or speculation.
Jackson approaches the piece as a way of tending to and sustaining memory, engaging with the legacies of family and place through the transformation of inherited materials. Watch an excerpt here.
2018
A redline map of Austin serves as a key reference material, informing the spatial arrangement and color placement within the installation. Installed directly in the space, the piece engages with the room’s dimensions and surfaces, integrating suspended and grounded elements to create a composition shaped by both material qualities and historical cartography.
2018
“Suspended Grid” draws structural inspiration from the “Connect Four” game, scaling up its familiar vertical grid into a large, outdoor installation. The grid functions not only as a visual framework but also as a participatory structure. Individual “playing pieces” reference intersectionality identifiers–such as race, gender, sexuality, and other identity categories–inviting participants to engage with the work by placing these markers within the grid. Chalk is provided so visitors can inscribe their own identifiers onto pieces, allowing each participant to effectively become a “playable” element in the structure. Through this format, the work transforms a familiar game into an interactive exploration of identity, visibility, and how individual positions intersect within a larger social framework.