Jen de los Reyes

Jen de los Reyes is an artist, educator, writer, and community arts organizer. With roots in the Riot Grrrl and DIY music scene, her practice incorporates pedagogical, ecological, and organizational methodologies. She founded and directed Open Engagement, an international conference on socially engaged art that was active from 2007–19. She worked within Portland State University from 2008–14 to establish the Art and Social Practice MFA program with a curriculum focused on place, engagement, and dialogue. Following that, Reyes was the Associate Director of the School of Art & Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she taught in the departments of Art and Museum and Exhibition Studies. 

Her collaborative work and practice have been situated at institutions including the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Queens Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, MCA Chicago, and the Portland Museum of Art.

She speaks widely and has presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum, UCSB, UMass, NYU, Textile Museum of Canada, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Concordia University, Carnegie Mellon University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Milwaukee Art Museum, UC Berkeley, Alfred University, The Power Plant, and Project Row Houses amongst many others.

She is the author of several books, most recently Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire. She divides her time between Chicago, where she founded Garbage Hill Farm, and Ithaca, NY.