Faculty Profile for Ariel Rene Jackson

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Ariel René Jackson is a Black creole anti-disciplinary artist whose practice considers land and landscape as sites of internal representation. Themes of transformation are embedded in their interest and application of repurposed imagery and objects, video, sound, and performance. Jackson is an alum of the University of Texas at Austin (2019), Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2019), Royal College of Art Exchange Program (2018), and The Cooper Union (2013).

Teaching Interests

My teaching focus is to inspire and challenge my students to critically think and assess their own progress as a collaborative process aimed to generate reflection and deeper thought. As a result of my interest in learning enrichment, I have led professional development sessions at the University of Texas at Austin and Grand Valley State University with a continued relationship with my alma mater, The Cooper Union, as a Portfolio Reviewer in New Orleans, Louisiana and currently Houston, Texas. It’s important for my students to learn free software as well as industry software through the art of troubleshooting and rejecting perfection for experimentation.

Research Interests

Jackson’s recent work explores the term ‘forecasting’ as an artistic lens in social engagement via re-coding meteorological language as a means to shift perspectives of what is understood as knowable.

Jackson's video and mixed-media works mine issues of identity and inheritance by considering the nature what is passed down from previous generations and exploring the stories embedded in the places we call home.

Jackson has collaborated with tap-dance choreographer Michael J. Love to create video and performance work, ruminating on the relationship between cultural memory and familial legacy.