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• 1 media/Screenshot 2026-05-08 121915.png 2026-05-08T18:56:15+00:00 Janine Avery 4 THE GARDEN: Janine Avery plain 2026-05-08T19:20:38+00:00

  JANINE AVERY - THE GARDEN

  The Garden is a body of work exploring the interconnectedness of the earth, the human soul, and the infinite cosmos. My senior thesis involves self-mythologizing, world building, and constructed histories. My work aims to confront existential nihilism through the act of creation and imagination. The body of work interposes science and fantasy, reality and spirituality, and folklore and sublimity; it is a representational gesture of my greater interests and ways of navigating the world. It embraces a return to ancestral knowledge, attachment to earth and cosmos, and a connection to a higher way of being. 

  I view my work not just as fantastical, but as realities crafted in the process of artistic creation. Infinity’s boundlessness allows for the possibility of anything the laws of physics will permit; thus these manufactured “other worlds” are not impossible. I employ allegorical visuals–such as creating human-animal hybrid creatures– to evoke a sense of wisdom and primal being. These visuals are reminiscent of biblical and folk stories, connecting the modern observer to an ancient past. In doing so, I subvert European artistic ideals (such as the female reclining nude) in order to decolonize the body and our view of human existence. The forms in my work are not quite human, not quite inhuman– not quite real, and not quite unreal.

  One of the pieces, titled “Contingent Beings” is a drawing depicting me as a half snake hybrid, coiling tightly around my partner in an Eden-like tableau. In philosophy, contingent beings are beings whose existence depends on some other thing. Another, titled “God’s Eye View” is a large ceramic sculpture with flowing water. It appears as a mountainous landscape with human-like figures perched about it; it also includes moving water, creating a sensory experience as if the viewer is part of the landscape themselves. The experience of looking down on this scene is that of a God in comparison to the little people; the observer is able to see the world from a more whole and complete perspective, thus giving them a God’s-eye-view. “(On) the Origin of Species” is a tall, thin, scroll-like painting including elements of folklore, self-portraiture, and evolution; the figures morph from human to snake with many iterations between, representing a kind of pseudo-evolution. The piece is on raw canvas and painted using ground pigments collected from the earth. Lastly, I created a modern illuminated manuscript titled “The World As [I] See It”, inscribing a quote from its namesake, a book compiling Einstein’s essays. The manuscript includes images symbolizing principles of metaphysics, referring to the nature of reality and free will. It is decorated with a tree (emphasizing the tree of knowledge or the notion of branching), Schrödinger’s cat, and an illuminated “I” depicting the double-slit experiment. Each piece is reflective of philosophical ideas and my personal interpretations of such grand and impossible ideas. 

  In my practice I seek to learn and spread knowledge through my work; I understand knowledge as holistic, coming from both logic and myth, science and feeling. This particular body of work is influenced by metaphysics, quantum mechanics, ecology, folk tradition, and ancient societies. I am drawn to making art about these subjects because they bridge ideas about belief, truth, perception, and the human experience.