JENNY HERSH

“I labor through art so as to understand the world through my hands — to hold my questions.

The island of Martha’s Vineyard is a place of great wealth and disparities, a place with a seasonal tourist economy which revolves around the central axis of wealth, value and labor. My experience farming on the island for two summers has given me both profound joy and given rise to unsettling critiques. The friction between these two experiences is where my work is rooted: “GULF” is a study of contradictions and interdependencies. My investigation spans from issues of land access and the housing crisis, to the ceremony of labor, to the harm of commodification and the privatization of littoral spaces.”