Jennifer Niswonger
News Feed
October 9 – November 13, 2021
New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art at University of Southern Indiana is proud to present News Feed, featuring paintings by university alumni Jennifer Niswonger. News Feed opens on Tuesday, July 6 and runs through Saturday, August 7, 2021. Gallery hours are 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Tuesday – Saturday. A public reception will be held with the artist on the closing day, Saturday, August 7 from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM. COVID safety procedures will be required, in accordance with University of Southern Indiana policy.
In News Feed, Jennifer Niswonger’s narrative paintings investigate the performative nature of digital media. Responding to the fervid cycle of the news, Niswonger seeks to make visible the clickbate language and flashy information that is designed more to keep audiences engaged than to facilitate information. Niswonger sets up her paintings as a stage, complete with backdrops, actors, costume, and dramatic lighting. Hints of various real-life news stories show up as props or positions in her pieces (i.e. a 2017 story about cows eating Skittles). Through her vivid use of color, custom-built canvases, and precise painting techniques, Niswonger plays up the drama and spectacle of the news cycle. By doing so, she also calls out the humor and hypocrisy of performatively re-posting digital content.
Jennifer Niswonger was born in 1991 in southern Indiana. She graduated from the University of Southern Indiana in 2014 where she received the 2015 Efroymson Bridge Year Fellowship. Niswonger moved to Athens, Georgia in 2016 to pursue her Master of Fine Arts degree at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Through her work and research at the University of Georgia, Niswonger was awarded the Willson Center Graduate Research Award and the Frierson Graduate Fellowship among other scholarships. While a graduate student, Niswonger managed the Glass Gallery at the art school and founded the Locker 666 Gallery, an alternative exhibition space project that began inside a school locker. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 2019. She is now working as an apprentice at Chico Lou’s Fine Tattoos under Sara Machen-Fogle in Athens, Georgia.
This exhibition is made possible in part by the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana, and the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.