Art — Jamworth

Artist Statement

Jessie Lamworth is a Baltimore–based multimedia artist engaging in a nuanced interrogation of consumerism, overproduction, and material culture through a range of media, including assemblage, sculpture, and textile art. Deploying humor and linguistic play as core elements of her artistic praxis, Lamworth repurposes discarded or overlooked materials and transforms this quotidian detritus into objects that expose the inherent absurdities of contemporary capitalist systems of mass production, consumption, and waste. In her practice, experimentation and craftsmanship converge with humor and levity in the service of a nuanced cultural critique.

At the crux of Lamworth’s practice lies a playful—never snide—use of humor, wordplay, and puns—tools that simultaneously serve to destabilize traditional aesthetic hierarchies and provoke critical reflection on the cultural and social implications of excess. Drawing on the Dadaists' subversion of language and the Surrealists’ manipulation of the uncanny, Lamworth’s work foregrounds the illogic embedded within everyday objects, revealing the absurdities of both our material relationships and the systems that sustain them.

Lamworth’s work is both born of and fosters a dynamic relationship between life and art: The accessibility of her materials—often sourced from everyday life—allows her to forge connections with a wide audience while questioning the broader systems of production, value, and waste. This recontextualization encourages a reflective engagement with the material world, offering a critique of the excesses of contemporary society while creating an entry point for viewers to actively engage with art in a more personal and familiar way.