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Angels – J.A. Young
In Angels (2024-present), I explore a dimension of political power that often goes ignored in contemporary, materialist Western culture: the world of the occult.
Artist : J.A. Young
Series : Angels
Continuing my core critique of corporate, state, and religious institutions the world over, in this series, I delve deeper to examine the hidden forces that drive and manipulate human actions and events.
My work remains rooted in my established methodology: a research-driven practice that engages photography, appropriated archival materials, and intuitive inquiry to explore the complexities of contemporary existence and metaphysical realities. Using both personal and public domain images as raw materials or substrates, my process begins with an initial deconstruction of the source material through radical re-framing and structural distortion.
This foundational intervention is then followed by a multi-layered transformation that includes darkroom experimentation, physical print manipulation, overpainting, and rephotography. Maintaining no loyalty to the original image, the resulting compositions are at once spatially disorienting and emotionally precise.
With a keen focus on materiality, I allow intuition, tactile attraction, and synchronicity to guide my artistic process. My goal is to create an immersive psychic landscape composed of nonverbal emotional states, subverted linear narratives, and resonant, often ambiguous meanings. Within this landscape, contemporary institutions re-enact timeless myths; intelligence operations are unveiled as black magic; and animal cruelty takes the form of ritual sacrifice.
Drawing on my personal experience as a queer, trans, autistic person living in a world dominated by men, Angels expresses feelings of alienation, claustrophobia, outrage, and despair for a world made hostile by human extravagance and divine indifference.
© J.A. Young – All rights reserved
Biography :
J.A. Young (b. 1986) is a trans, autistic, experimental mixed media artist and photographer based in the American South. Her research-based practice draws on a range of influences (e.g., cultural anthropology, world mysticism, and the occult) to critically engage contemporary socio-political and ecological issues.
Thematically, Young’s work explores how humanity has abused its own technological innovations to seize control of an entire planet: from the cultivation of fire to the advent of agriculture, all the way to the nuclear era and the age of the internet.
The final output of Young’s process consists of unique, limited edition works on paper. Each piece belongs to an ongoing, ever-evolving body of work that Young divides into distinct phases or series — the first two of which are titled OF FIRE, FAR SHINING (2023-2024) and ANGELS (2024-present).
