Jen Delos Reyes

Jen Delos 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.

Delos 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)

  • Delos Reyes, Jen. Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire, Collected Writings 2007-2022, Trumpeter Press, 2022.
  • Delos Reyes, Jen. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Public Engagement But Were Afraid to Ask. Chicago, Something Other Press, 2020.
  • Delos 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.
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