Jess Atieno’s practice engages African modernisms and visual culture through a postcolonial lens, critically examining the enduring imprint of colonial photographic practices on representations of place, home, and identity. Her research interrogates historic images, attending to their spectral presence and the ways they mediate memory, belonging, and dispossession.

Guided by artistic gestures that centre decolonized interpretations of history, Atieno makes time travels through history’s material remains such as photographs, maps and documents, incorporating them into the making of large screen prints and intricate woven tapestries. These acts of remediation do not merely reproduce these images but reanimate them, unsettling their fixity and opening them to new possibilities of meaning.

Atieno employs collage, fragmentation, and material manipulation as strategies to destabilize the photographic field, positioning her work sites of intervention. By engaging the screen print halftone and weaving binary code as visual registers, she constructs nuanced poetic narratives that resist the totalizing gaze of colonial photography. This process unfolds through a haptic collaboration between her body, the silk screen, and the loom— an embodied, multisensory negotiation that challenges the colonial logics of visibility and representation, ultimately proposing alternative ways of seeing and knowing.

• Master of Fine Art- School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Bachelor of Technology in Visual Communication - Technical University of Kenya

• The New Art School Modality (FESTAC 77) - Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
• Àsìkò Art School  (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

• Odyssey,  Galerie Cecile-Fakhoury, Dakar Senegal, 2023
• Of Land, Body and Water, Montague Contemporary, New York, 2023
• The Moon Man Has Gone Under The Sea, Red Hill Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya ,2022
• Of Ghostly Silences and Constant Yearnings, Galerie Cecile-Fakhoury, Abijan, Ivory Coast, 2022
• To Stand on a Grain of Wheat, Red Hill Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya, 2019
• Full-Frontal, Kuona Trust Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya, 2015​

• Femmes: Curated by Pharell Williams, Perrotin, Paris, France, 2025
• Black is the Colour of the Cosmos, Arts and Public Life, Chicago, USA 2023

• The Armory Show 2023, Galerie Cecile-Fakhoury, New York, USA
• Shelters, Cecile-Fakhoury Gallery, Paris, France, 2023
• We contain Multitudes, High Line Nine Galleries, New York, USA, 2023
• Sovereign African Art Prize, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa, 2023
• Bamako Encounters: African Biennale of Photography, Bamako, Mali,2022
• Unravelling The (Under) Development Complex, Savvy Contemporary Berlin, Germany,2022
• GroundFloor Biennial, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, USA, 2022
• 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, New York, NY, 2022
• UBUNTU, World Trade Organization Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland, 2022
• Out of Place, Public Art Project courtesty of RedBull Arts, Chicago, USA, 2022
• I Have This Memory, it is Not My Own, Galerie Cecile-Fakhoury, Dakar, Senegal, 2020
• Lagos Biennial, Lagos Nigeria, 2019
• I Will See What I Want to See, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya, 2019
• The Making of Worlds, Festung Hohensalzburg, Salzburg, Austria, 2019
• Line Gauge, Centre for Contemporary Art,Lagos, Nigeria, 2018
• Being Her(e), Banco Economico, Luanda, Angola, 2017
• YouTopic, Millerntor Gallery, Hamburg, Germany, 2017
• Here & Here, Asni Gallery Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2016
• African Contemporary, Red Hill Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya, 2015
• Kenya Art Fair, Sarit Center, Nairobi, Kenya, 2015

• Art and Public Life, University of Chicago Arts, Chicago, USA
• Artist in Residence for the Lagos Biennial, Lagos, Nigeria, 2019
• ​Salzburg Summer Academy, 2019
• Jackman Goldwasser Residency, Hyde Park Center, Chicago, 2018
• Art Millerntor Gallery, Hamburg, Germany, 2017
• British Council East Africa Artists Exchange, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2015

• The Rockefeller Foundation
• The Blavy Collection
• The A. Taubman Foundation
• The African Arts Trust
• Redhill Gallery Collection
• Africanna Art Foundation

• The Braid Fund
• Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation Grant 
• Goethe Institute Project Fund 
• James Nelson Raymond Fellowship 
• Graduate Dean Professional Development Award 
• New Artist Society Scholarship 
• The Bisi Silva Grant 

Nairobi Print Project (NPP) – Founder

NPP is a 3-part project dedicated to open access scholarship and conversation on art and curatorial practice

in Africa and the Black Diaspora. It consists of a journal, podcast and studio and is the first of its kind in East Africa.

nairobiprintproject.com

• Lecturer - Fiber and Material Studies Department. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 2021- current         
•  Teaching Artist, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Illinois. 2021 - current.

• Teaching Artist for Adult Art Workshops, Chicago Public Libraries 2025

•  Teaching Artist , Chicago Public Schools- Kozminski Community Academy, Chicago, Illinois. 2021 - 2022
•  Teaching Artist, Kuona Trust Art Center, Nairobi, Kenya. 2015 - 2018
•  Part-time Art and Design Teacher- Peponi School (PII), Nairobi, Kenya. 2016 - 2017

• Norval Sovereign African Art Prize, Shortlist, 2023
• Henrike Grohs Award, Shortlist, 2022

• Guest Artist, The Future of the Past: Artists & Archives, Photography Department, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2024
• Panelist, Odyssey x Along Way from Holmes, Green Line Performing Arts Center, Chicago, USA, 2023
• Panelist: Perspectives in Photographic Practices, Latitude Chicago, USA, 2023
• Guest Artist, Photo seminar, Photography Department, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2023
• Presenter: Praxis & Practice. Digital Weaving Conference. Cleveland, USA, 2023
• Panelist: Perspective in Photographic Practices, Latitude Chicago, USA, 2023
• Panelist: Radio Book Rwanda, Goethe Institut, Nairobi, Kenya, 2018