Jenifer K Wofford
About
Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco artist and educator whose work investigates hybridity, history, calamity and global culture, often with a humorous bent. She is also 1/3 of the Filipina-American artist trio M.O.B.
Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Asian Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, YBCA, San Jose Museum of Art, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop. Further afield, she has shown at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Silverlens Galleries (Philippines), VWFA (Malaysia), and Osage Gallery (Hong Kong).
Wofford is a 2023 YBCA 100 Honoree and a recent recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her other awards include the Eureka Fellowship, the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Art Matters Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. She has also been artist-in-residence at Lucas Artist Residency (Saratoga), The Living Room (Philippines), Liguria Study Center (Italy) and KinoKino (Norway).
She makes work informed by hybridity, history, calamity and global culture: it’s the intercultural creative logic of a Filipina-American raised in Hong Kong, the UAE, Malaysia, and California, as well as that of a longtime educator in a diverse range of communities. This intercultural logic demands interdisciplinary approaches, where drawing, performance, video, web and print often intersect and overlap. She’s rarely satisfied with a single outcome or discipline: it has to serve other functions, take other forms, spur longer conversations.
Maintenance Actions
Jenifer K Wofford celebrates her mentors- through artwork, casual conversation, and more formal artist talks and panels. She is able to turn something stressful, such as a damaged or defaced mural, into a fun way to celebrate community and care.
She wrote about her mural, Yōkoso- “Yōkoso generated a lot of good energy and good will . I am glad the mural brightened up the neighborhood, and it was always nice when neighbors and passersby would comment appreciatively about it. I have huge gratitude for every friend who showed up to paint this thing after an incident. Thank you all. It was a joy to hang out with you outdoors. and paint and eat doughnuts ans sing karaoke and joke and catch up, expecially during Covid, when we were all so isolated.”
*Images and words taken directly from the artist’s website and Instagram page with permission.
Video: documentation of Jenifer K Wofford repairing her mural, Yōkoso, with help from the community.
Images 1 & 2: Chatsilog Revisited, Artwork made as part of M.O.B. (Eliza Barrios, Reanne Estrada, and Jennifer Wofford), Installation, photo, video, sculpture; Asian Art Museum, 2022
Image 3 & 4: Pattern Recognition, mural, acrylic on Panel; Asian Art Museum, Lawrence and Gorretti Lui Hyde Street Art Wall, 2020