Jillian Freyer

42 Wayne employs still and moving images to explore the notion of experience as touch, and emotional and physical endurance performed through female bodies. Witnessed events and staged performances serve as a way to seek new intimacies between me and my subjects. Texture and surface become an important role in their ability to relay information about the conditions of the individuals, whether it be a physical or psychological state. Physical sensations sourced from past experiences show up in subtle details that reveal exposed skin, pressed bodies and the simple observation of physical form concerning others in space. Inherited beliefs of misogyny and expectations concerning gender serve as an entry point to my subjects. I use personal experience and my background as a female from a close-knit family of women to address issues regarding belief systems while photography becomes my mediator.

Jillian Freyer (b. 1989) holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, where she has been awarded the John Ferguson Weir Award for overall excellence in the Yale School of Art. She has exhibited her photographs throughout the US and internationally, including the Aperture Foundation (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, LTD Los Angeles, Back Gallery Project (Vancouver), and David Zwirner Gallery (NYC). Her work has been featured in various publications, such as TMagazine, GUP Magazine, Aint Bad Magazine and has been commissioned by GQ, The NewYorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic and INC Magazine. Jillian’s work employs still and moving images to explore the notion of experience as touch and emotional and physical endurance performed through female bodies. She is interested in using the camera as a mediator to observe the tension and sensuality between her subjects.