Jennifer West (b.1966, Topanga, CA) is a Los Angeles-based artist who has explored materialism in film for over fifteen years. She is known for her digitized films that are made by hand manipulating film celluloid. Joanna Kleinberg wrote on her work in Frieze “the intermingling of materiality, feeling and identity creates a wild blend of synaesthetic experience wherein the substances of life literally and figuratively colour the film. West’s writing has appeared in Artforum, Frieze and Mousse Magazine. West has produced sixteen zine artist books which were recently acquired by the Getty Museum.
Significant commissions include works for LIAF Biennial (2022); Seattle Art Museum (2016-2017); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2016); The High Line, New York, NY (2012); MIT List Visual Arts Center (2011); Aspen Art Museum (2010); and Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London (2009). West has had solo exhibitions and presentations at the Pompidou Center, Paris (2022); Times Square Arts, New York (2021); JOAN Los Angeles (2020); Contemporary Art Museum St Louis (2018); Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China (2017); Seattle Art Museum (2016-2017); Museo d’Arte Nuoro, Sardinia (2017); Tramway, Glasgow (2016); S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK (2012); Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany (2010); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, (2010); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2008); White Columns, New York, NY (2007). She received an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and a BA from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.She has lectured widely on her ideas of the “Analogital” and is the Program Director of MFA Art and an Associate Professor of the Practice of Fine Arts at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design. In 2022, a monograph on her work, Media Archaeology was published by Radius Books, funded by a grant from the Thoma Foundation.
