Sustained Spaces in the work of Jennifer Basile

By Pietro Daprano.

Jennifer Basile
Coot Bay Pond
2021
Black ballpoint pen on paper
14 x 11 in (35,6 x 28 cm)

One of the works that often catches our attention at the Fuentes Angarita Collection is Coot Bay Pond, 2001 by Jennifer Basile (b. 1973, Manhasset, NY) due to the sustainable, environmentalist and aesthetic approach of her proposal. Basile holds a BFA in photography from the University of Miami and an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She is a tenured professor of printmaking, painting and drawing at Miami-Dade College Kendall Campus.

Her work Coot Bay Pond refers to the landscape and ecosystems threatened by the uncontrolled expansion of cities in states like Florida where the natural surface of the land is no longer as wild and wide as the blue sky.

It is an artistic analysis that adds a critical look at the risks of demographic increase in different aspects of our lives, providing a review of the collapse of natural systems, environmental degradation, inequality, displacement, violation of rights of native communities among other issues that concern the Floridian territory where she draws inspiration and emotional reflections.

Basile, through engraving, creates extensions of her gaze, tacitly narrates facts linked to the documentary traction of the landscape and the extension of sustainability as a concern for her environment and life.