THIS IS THE SHAPE OF ME
J P 제피 is a bicultural and bigender artist, color explorer, tree climber, and truthseeker who has created home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. S(he) challenges dominant narratives and creates inceptive spaces in a practice of spiritual activism and exploration of the porous relationship between truth, beauty, and identity. (He)r work has been described as an artistic oxymoron: both loud and quiet, solid and transparent, hand-made and precise, delicate and aggressive, exuberant and restrained, formal and emotional. It is a reflection of J P, an artist of blended culture who is both loud and quiet, urban and rural, delicate and aggressive, masculine and feminine, adventurous and routine.
SOUL UMBRA
J P's transdisciplinary practice exists in an ontological space developed through community engagement, ceremony, sculpture, site-specific installation, works on paper, sound, and performance and presents stories of ritual integration and spiritual journeys. It is polytonal and unconfined by bifurcation - it explores bicultural and bigendered traits, the liminality of this world and beyond, and carries forward a heritage while simultaneously exploding convention. This examination is the outgrowth of continual struggle for safety in body and soul by synthesizing tensions and collapsing genres, spaces, identities, and norms. The work integrates personal story and cultural symbols and inhabits the body.