LISA JARRETT
Installation view of Off Record at Lisa Jarrett’s studio. Size variable, mesh and woven hair, 2024. Photograph by Mario Gallucci
Lisa Jarrett
Lisa Jarrett (she/her) is an artist working in social and visual forms. Her intersectional practice considers the politics of difference within a variety of settings including: schools, landscapes, fictions, racial imaginaries, studios, communities, museums, galleries, walls, mountains, mirrors, floors, rivers, and prisms. She recently discovered that her primary medium is questions; the most urgent of which is: What will set you free?
She is co-founder/director of projects like KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art); the Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice in NE Portland, OR; and Art 25: Art in the 25th Century.
Lisa exists and makes work within the African Diaspora. She lives in Portland, Oregon where she co-authors social practice projects and continues her 14+ year investigation into Black hair and its care in various forms. She is Associate Professor of Community and Context Arts at Portland State University's School of Art + Design where she teaches classes in Art + Social Practice.
Off Record
Artist Statement
My practice has long considered the politics of difference across space and time. In the ongoing series Migration Studies, I continue to explore migratory systems and streams and the way that it forms (or is conversant with) Black femininity’s relationship to hair and beauty routines. Migration, forced or chosen, has been a defining force in the formation of Black identities. In the Migration Studies project Black hair and the attendant products and rituals are my primary materials. I often engage these materials to trace lost histories and homelands and to chart future trajectories. Which is to say the work is actively constructing future narratives reliant on Black life today. I often think about “migration” and its relationship to narratives about liberation and freedom. I also consider it in terms of vast possibilities for a Black body to re-situate itself across space and time. However, in the context of women incarcerated within the US prison-industrial complex physical migration is limited by both space and time. How then does Black hair perform on the inside? What shapes our beauty with limited access to resources for care like the Beauty Supply and salon? What knowing do we carry with us and how does it keep us safe? What hair rituals existed for Black women incarcerated at the Nevada State Prison and how do they echo our collective migratory journeys? This work is a monument to those women in recognition of the tenderness and care that most certainly was present in addition to whatever else.
Detail of Off Record installation of impossible escape plans in the barber cell by Lisa Jarrett. Size variable, mesh and woven hair, 2024. Photograph by Mario Gallucci
Off Record
Off Record is a solo exhibition, an installation of 24 panels and a hairdresser’s cape, woven with pink and red hair.
The installation Off Record is Jarrett’s response to the Barber Cell space in the Nevada State Prison, June-October 2024 from the series of exhibitions titled Far Beyond the Walls.
Far Beyond the Walls is an immersive series of conceptual exhibitions within the actual cells and cell blocks, medical area, and culinary section of the decommissioned Nevada State prison. Each artist occupied and transformed an area inside the prison complex, drawing the viewers’ attention to specific topics and concerns in relation to the US prison industrial complex. The 25 artists include formerly incarcerated persons, a former criminal defense Lawyer who worked with people on death row inside this prison, sculptors, photographers, painters, social justice artists, several poets, (incarcerated and formerly incarcerated) and a soundscape artist, along with a group show of works by currently incarcerated people.
available work below
contact Melhop Gallery º7077 for prices and further information
hello@melhopgallery.com
Off Record installation view of impossible escape plans in the barber cell by Lisa Jarrett. Size variable, mesh and woven hair, 2024 at the Nevada State Maximum Security Prison, Nevada. Photograph by Frances Melhop
Off Record installation view of impossible escape plans in the barber cell by Lisa Jarrett. Size variable, mesh and woven hair, 2024 at the Nevada State Maximum Security Prison, Nevada. Photograph by Frances Melhop
Off Record barber’s cape by Lisa Jarrett. Size variable, mesh and woven hair, 2024. Photograph by Mario Gallucci
Migration Studies
Artist Statement
Migration Studies (2018-present) is an ongoing project. I work with drawing, sculpture, and installation to examine hair care and beauty routines within Black culture as a bridge to themes about inventing our own survival. These routines are rituals wherein we claim beauty standards existing beyond and before dominant narratives. I use the tools of these ritual practices as drawing materials whose histories both trace and extend our lost languages and homelands. These material and formal choices reflect my broader interest in repetition and reproduction as tools of consumer culture and cultural preservation. I am curious about how our personal/private routines (and the attendant products and purchases) live within our imaginations, conversations, and stories while also connecting us to our collective past and future. The art object is the transformative mechanism by which different systems of value become visible and knowable.
Installation view of Migration Studies from the Tenderheaded series
available work below
contact Melhop Gallery º7077 for prices and further information
hello@melhopgallery.com
Migration Studies (No. 21, tenderheaded), 2022, mixed media, Spetra 26" hair woven into Kozo paper, acrylic, 50 x 30 in (127.0 x 76.2 cm)
Installation view of Migration Studies from the Your mouthfeel, my love, and other prayers I series
Migration Studies (No. 33, Your mouthfeel, my love, and other prayers I), 2022
mixed media, Spetra 26" hair woven into Kozo paper, acrylic, 50 x 30 in (127.0 x 76.2 cm)
Migration Studies (No. 35), 2022, mixed media, Spetra 26" hair woven into Kozo paper, acrylic, 50 x 30 in (127.0 x 76.2 cm)
Tenderheaded series on view at the Tacoma Museum of Art, 2025-2026
Migration Studies (No. 33, Your mouthfeel, my love, and other prayers I), 2022
mixed media, Spetra 26" hair woven into Kozo paper, acrylic, 50 x 30 in (127.0 x 76.2 cm)
Heart Condition installation view. Left to right Migration Studies #20 Janie’s First Dream iii After Zora Neale Hurston, Migration Studies #19 Janie’s First Dream ii After Zora Neale Hurston, Migration Studies #18 Janies First Dream i After Zora Neale Hurston,
Lisa Jarrett. Photograph by Sam Gehrke
Solo and duo Exhibitions
2024
Off Record*, solo exhibition as part of Melhop Gallery º7077’s Far Beyond the Walls project, Nevada State Prison (decommissioned), Carson City, NV (August 2024-present)
Migration Studies*, Tinted Connections, Portland, OR (July 2024)
2023
Lisa Jarrett: It Cut a Sky, Russo Lee Gallery, Portland, OR, (November 2023)
Lisa Jarrett and Jamele Wright Sr., Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (July-August 2023)
2022
Heart Condition*, Russo Lee Gallery, Portland, OR (June 2022)
2020
SHEEN*, Nine Gallery, Portland, OR (January 2020)
HOUSE/FIELD/HOME*, Wa Na Wari, Seattle, WA (March-November 2020)
2019
Future Ancestors, Ori Gallery, Portland, OR (October-November 2019)
2018
Speaking Volumes: Scores for Transforming Hate*, Holter Museum of Art, Helena, MT (October 2018)
Imagining Home: 100 Exercises in Empathy*, Russo Lee Gallery, Portland, OR (September 2018)
Selected Group Exhibitions/Projects
2024
Roots/Uproot, Hedreen Gallery, Seattle, WA (October 2024-January 2025)
Blackness is…the Refusal to be Reduced, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA (May 18, 2024 - March 14, 2027)
KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art) project, Portland, OR (ongoing)
2023
Black Artists of Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (August 2023-March 2024)
Femme Noire, Seattle Art Museum and Wa Na Wari, Seattle, WA (August 2023)
Converge 45: Assembly Parallax Art Center, Portland, OR (August-October 2023)
But, why are you here? Russo Lee Gallery, Portland, OR (June 2023)
Art Beyond 2023, Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR (May 2023)
KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art) project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
2022
1,000 MILES PER HOUR | 2022 FotoFocus Biennial | Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD), Columbus, OH, 9/15/2022-10/28/2022 (artist talk: Friday, Sept. 16, from 11:00-12:00 EST; opening recitation: Thursday, Sept. 15, artists panel at 4:00-5:00 EST )
TWO CULTURES, ONE FAMILY: BUILDING FAMILY, FINDING HOME exhibition | Marjorie Barrack Museum of Art, Las Vegas, Nevada, 8/30/2022-1/28/2023 (opening reception: Friday, September 2, 5:00 PM PST)
KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art) project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
2021
Time Being, Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR (June 2020)
The Blue Walk, PICA (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art), TBA Festival 2021 performance participant in artist vanessa german’s project, The Blue Walk, Portland, OR (September 2021)
KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art) project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
2020
AFTER LIFE (we survive), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), San Francisco, CA (November 2020)
Seattle Deconstructed Art Fair, Seattle, WA (August 2020)
Between You and Me, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI (April 2020)
A Year of Asé, Ori Gallery, Portland, OR (Febrary 2020)
KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art) project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
2019
Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) Print Spree, Portland, OR (October 2019)
Portland Biennial 2019, Disjecta Center for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR (August 2019)
(ON DRAWING), Littman+White Gallery, Portland, OR (January 2019)
Black Futures, Littman+White Gallery, Portland, OR (February 2019)
KSMoCA (King School Museum of Contemporary Art) project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
Harriet Tubman Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
Art 25: Art in the Twenty-Fifth Century collective project (founded 2019 with Lehua M. Taitano)
2018
The Work Continues, Northview Gallery, Portland, OR (October 2018)
Charcoal, 101 South Jackson, Eunice Waymon Arts Services, Seattle, WA (August 2018)
KSMoCA International Art Fair, at PICA as part of Converge 45, Portland, OR (August 2018)
Inside Me and Island Shaped W/hole (with Lehua M. Taitano), Urban X Indigenous, SOMARTS, San Francisco, CA
Talk to Everyone and Everything About Race in Hood River, OR (project with Amanda Leigh Evans and Lauren Moran), Columbia Center for the Arts, Hood River, OR (May 2018)
Here. The City Billboard, Greensboro Project Space (project with Adam Carlin, Emma Colburn, Lisa Jarrett, Lauren
Moran, Anke Schuettler, and Kim Sutherland (May/June 2018)
Elements of Reclamation, Ori Gallery, Portland, OR (February 2018)
KSMoCA (King School Museum of Contemporary Art) project (with Harrell Fletcher), Portland, OR
Selected Collections
Public
Yale University Art Gallery Collection, New Haven, CT
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Pendleton, OR
Missoula Art Museum, Missoula, MT
Holter Museum of Art, Helena, MT
Gibson Square Museum of Art, Great Falls, MT
Regional Arts and Cultural Council small works collection, Portland, OR