jina valentine is a mother, visual artist, and educator. Her practice is informed by traditional craft techniques and interweaves histories latent within found texts, objects, narratives, and spaces. jina’s work involves language translation, mining content from material and digital archives, and experimental strategies for humanizing data-visualization. She is also co-founder of Black Lunch Table, an oral-history archiving project. Her work has received recognition and support from the Graham Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and Art Matters among others. jina received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon and her MFA from Stanford University, and an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Artist Statement

Much of my current practice relates to reconciling the disconnect between data illustrations and the realities they reference. I intend for this work to foster more nuanced and complicated understandings of sociopolitical phenomena, and to inspire compassionate associations with communities and individuals affected by or generative of these phenomena. My projects employ the use of data aggregation and visualization softwares; research in physical and digital archives; material experimentation; and collaboration with programmers, humanities researchers, and archivists. 

In the current work, I consider the disconnect between data visualization and lived experience; whether the illustrations confound or explain phenomena. By sourcing from public databases and humanizing demographic data, I hope to make information more comprehensible, encourage engagement with online archives, and support those initiatives and platforms fostering free and open access to information.