she/they jkwornson@gmail.comjkwornson.comDrawing/Painting, Engaged & Public Arts/Social Practice, Interdisciplinary, Performance, Sculpture/Installation, Experimental Theater and DanceIn-person, Hybrid, OnlineBIO Jess Kiel-Wornson is, among other things, an interdisciplinary artist. Grounded and rescued by feminist and performance theories, she considers the everyday stuff of our lives: the regular, low-brow, foolish, and forgotten, as tools to reimagine a deeply oppressive systemic world. In visual art, performance, and text, she gathers and merges unfinished and broken pieces into webs, considering, as Audre Lorde said, how old ideas might feel in new situations. She and her artwork demand criticality and emotionality in enormous measure as forms of essential resistance to a culture that works to subjugate, delegitimize, and deny these forms of deep collective power. Recent collaborations include Echo: We are Imperfect Mortal Beings (April Seller’s Dance Collective, 2025), It's Physical (Jennifer Glaws and Jagged Moves, 2024) and Mariology (Nancy Keystone and Critical Mass Performance Group, 2023). Jess is delighted by the exercise of being a trusted but unreliable narrator of her own life.TEACHING PHILOSOPHY & MENTORSHIPMy teaching philosophy, like my practice, is based largely on connectivity. I am interested in making and maintaining relationships, having honest conversations about artwork and where it meets other elements of life, and about making connections between one's practice and their lived experiences and observations. Art making, for me, is an inherently political act, one that thrives in conversation and collaboration. I am eager to talk with folks about the politics, stories, and textures in the everyday.