Jessalyn Mailoa
“Feeding,” 38” x 28” x 28” , Mixed Media
Jessalyn Mailoa works with the interplay of technology, craft, and the natural world. Her practice examines the value systems embedded within these realms and the complexities that emerge when they entangle. She engages with plants native to Southeast Asia like jasmine flowers, orchids, and rice, which appear in her work as living archives that carry collective histories and personal memories. Technology functions as a medium of mediation, revealing and distorting information. Machines that perform simple and repetitive tasks are juxtaposed with craft processes such as beading, which materializes invisible gestures of labor and care. Through exploring these material relations, Jessalyn’s work invites viewers to dwell in subtle, often overlooked spaces that unsettle the dominant narrative of linear progress.
Jessalyn Mailoa
Jessalyn Mailoa is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia. She moved to the United States in 2017, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Glass and Graphic Design, and studied psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. After graduating, she spent several years working in glass studios in Norfolk, Virginia, and Kansas City, Missouri, where she taught public glassblowing classes and produced glassware. She is currently a second-year Master of Fine Arts candidate in the glass program at Tyler School of Art and Architecture.