Trans Art Is Artist: Pascale Jarvis

Pronouns: They/them/theirs

Why do you want to submit your artwork to the Trans Art Is opening showcase?

As a nonbinary person who lives near Andersonville and whose work centers around resilience in the face of trauma, it seems like there is potential for my work to fit in well with the theme of your showcase.

Artist Bio

Pascale Jarvis is a fourth-year student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they are pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art with an Emphasis in Creative Writing. Off the written page, Pascale creates visual art through traditional and digital forms of printmaking. Pascale’s poetry has been published in over a dozen magazines and journals, including the Labletter, the Riding Light Review, and the East Coast Ink Magazine.

Artist Statement

Through a combination of poetry, printmedia, and performance, my artistic practice explores resilience in the face of trauma. Specifically, I investigate the heredity of emotional pain, on a familial as well as societal scale. I am also fascinated by the ways in which suffering is processed both individually and collectively.
For this, I rely on materials ranging from my own body to pencil and paper, ink, woodblock, and squeegee. Across all media, my practice focuses on how the body, as a physical site, acts as a monument to trauma. I’m inspired by an assortment of artists.

These include the poet, printmaker, and performer David Wojnarowicz and the way his work, such as the piece Untitled (One Day, This Kid), bears witness to the extreme abuse he experienced as a queer man before succumbing to AIDS. The poetry of Mary Oliver is another influence, specifically the way she ruminates on serious themes through her imagery of nature—the thing that also brings her the most comfort. Within my own work, Don’t Bring An Axe to A Knife Fight combines elements of poetry, prose, and screenwriting to trace the lineage of physical and mental illness within my family, turning my body into a final product of overlapping damage.

My current work moves beyond my individual experiences to expand on the way collective communities process and recover from shared trauma. In a series of screenprints called “Forget-Me-Notes,” I’m working to examine the ways in which emotional hurt collides and coexists throughout a variety of different relationships. Through this project and those to come, I try to bear witness to pain, all while investigating its roots through the imagery of that which is dear to me.