Jennifer Ling Datchuk
poem by Emily Macgriff

Jennifer Ling Datchuk is an artist born in Warren, Ohio and raised in Brooklyn, New York.  Her work is an exploration of her layered identity – as a woman, a Chinese woman, as an “American,” as a third culture kid. Trained in ceramics, Datchuk works with porcelain and other materials often associated with traditional women’s work, such as textiles and hair, to discuss fragility, beauty, femininity, intersectionality, identity, and personal history. Her practice evolved from sculpture to mixed media as she began to focus on domestic objects and the feminine sphere. Handwork and hair both became totems of the small rituals that fix, smooth over, and ground women’s lives. Through these materials, she explores how Western beauty standards influenced the East, how the non-white body is commodified and sold, and how women’s – globally, girls’ – work is still a major economic driver whose workers still struggle for equality.

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Emily MacGriff is a writer and bookmaker living in Detroit. She’s heavily guided by her work aboard expedition vessels as a naturalist throughout the polar regions, South Pacific, Europe and North America. Since retiring from shipboard life, Emily has focused on navigating her world as a woman, artist and mother. In recent years, she earned an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, founded the MacGriff Writing Studio and joined the MA/MFA Design for Climate Action faculty at the College for Creative Studies.