Jennifer Johnson is a Philadelphia-based sculptor who works with ceramics and fibers, but also electronics, video, and performance, to create installations. She is interested in the production of history and focuses on how architecture reveals lived experiences.
She has created a series of site-specific installations over the past decade. Work currently on view includes:
An Archive of Desire, on view at Glen Foerd on the Delaware since 2021, includes a series of maquettes (ceramics, video and electronics) about the mansion that were made during her 2019-2020 residency.
Other recent projects:
Sidewalk Mediations shown in 2025 at Kieran Timberlake's Bottling House was the first exhibition of her Powelton Village mosaics. On the Banks of Sandy Creek (2025), exhibited at the Pearlstein Gallery looks at the dramatic change to the land surrounding the gallery over the past century with four 3-D maps. Her 2022 project Linger recreated Park Towne Place's high rise buildings to look at the 1950-60s redevelopment period in Philadelphia; Linger 2 broadened the view to include other midcentury high-rise clusters, both public and private. For The Men’s Room (2019), embroidery-impressed ceramic paintings of the Crane Arts Gallery looked at the history of the building. The Architecture of Remembering (2017), copied and deconstructed Nina Hole’s Himmel House during her residency in Skælskør, Denmark. Let me clear up a few things (2016), gave her grandmother’s life voice at Temple Contemporary by focusing on a midcentury house, through ceramics, video, performance and electronics.
Photo credit: Kieran Timberlake