Jen de los Reyes

Jen de los Reyes is the strong eldest daughter of an immigrant single mother. Through her upbringing on Canada's prairies she learned about resourcefulness, community building, and how to prioritize joy, fashion, and aesthetics from her Filipine mother. She is the first homeowner and degree holder in her immediate family. She centers her practice around education, ecologies, and the transformative possibilities of sharing domestic space as a community resource.

Reyes identifies with Wendell Berry's description as a "farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts," an educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer. She is defiantly optimistic, a friend to all birds, and a proponent that our institutions can become tender and vulnerable.

Academic Research/Specialty Areas

  • Collaborative practice
  • Interdisciplinary art
  • Socially engaged art

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Classes (Selected)

  • ART 2103 First-Year Studio Research Workshop

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

  • The Future of Work, group exhibition, Art Gallery of Burlington, Ontario (2022)
  • Emergent Futures: State of the Field, three days of exchanges and social research in North Carolina's Triangle & Triad (2019)
  • Art Lessons: What I Never Thought I'd Learn About Life From Contemporary Art, solo exhibition, Adobe Books, San Francisco (2017)

Publications (Selected)

  • de los Reyes, Jen. Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire, Collected Writings 2007-2022, Trumpeter Press, 2022.
  • de los Reyes, Jen. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Public Engagement But Were Afraid to Ask. Chicago, Something Other Press, 2020.
  • de los Reyes, Jen. I'm Going to Live the Life I Sing About in my Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning, OE in Print, 2016.

Selected Work

  • Nine different image squares with different photos of people talking combined with the letters OE and OPEN.

    Open Engagement Conference (2007–2019). image / provided

  • Illustration of a woman with long braided hair holding a farm tool in one hand and two small dogs in the other, surrounded by a small garden, three chickens, and two goats.

    Garbage Hill Farm is a small-scale, backyard, artist-run urban farm on a post-industrial corridor serving Chicago's McKinley Park neighborhood. The project models what is possible on a residential lot in an urban center. illustration / Allison Fries

  • Blue , yellow, and white parakeet perched on the back of a hand.

    Portrait of Ocean (2020), part of Artists in Presidents. photo / Megan Codilan

  • Building with red covered windows and two black and white signs hanging on both ends.

    Invitation (2020) National Public Housing Museum. image / provided

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