Jenny Fine. As in a Mirror, Dimly

About

Jenny Fine is an Alabama-based artist whose work explores personal and cultural memory, identity, and our ever-shifting relationship to the photograph. 

This body of work is shaped by the sudden and tragic loss of Fine’s sister, Beth. Her death was a result of the failure of our broken healthcare system. In the wake of her sister’s passing, Fine explores the unknowns surrounding her loss, the systems that failed her sister, the indifference of officials in power, and a family left without answers or peace. Her work looks inward as a meditation on care, grief, and the unseen forces that shape life and death. 

Photography, both artistically and spiritually, is a medium in this body of work. It is a sacred means of reaching toward what is gone. Images that once showed proof of one’s existence now also define their absence. As in a Mirror, Dimly draws inspiration from the psychomanteum which is a mirror used as a device for spirit communication, from the ectoplasm photography of mediums generations ago and Victorian-era spiritualism. The works in this series merge photography with ritual and memory with material in a search for connection beyond the veil.

Fine gives form and life to shapeshifting memories through her sculpture, installations, photography, and performance works. Family stories flicker on the theater screen of her mind. She uses what materials are at hand to map the unknown to take her sister on an epic journey through the afterlife, while she also attempts to solidify and preserve the ephemeral quality of her memories. The result immerses us in an intimate spiritual world that merges life and death.

Objects and imagery found throughout the exhibit, like wishbones, evil eyes, and horseshoes, symbolize luck, ritual, and protection, as if to form an armor for navigating grief. This symbolism, and the rituals often attached to them in seances, religious ceremonies, and witchcraft, Fine looks at the many ways we try to undo death, bring power to the powerless, and attempt the impossible. These devotional practices fashion a tether line into the hereafter and grasp with determination for presence in the face of absence.