Jamie Isenstein

Jamie Isenstein was born in Portland, Oregon in 1975 and she currently lives in New York. Her works include performance, installations, drawings, and sculptures. In many of her exhibitions, Isenstein often “becomes” inanimate objects. She actually pretends to be the object even though it may be uncomfortable and she has to stay in the same position for hours at a time whether it is standing, sitting, crouching, etc. Her most difficult performance was “Arm Chair” (2006). Isenstein had to sit perfectly still for hours for a whole month. She was only able to listen to recording of Moby Dick. She said, “when [she] emerged from the chair at the end of the day, [she] felt like [she] had sea legs, and [she] kept talking to [herself] in nineteenth-century sailor speak.”

Another one of Jamie Isenstein’s works is “Dancing Pop-Up Fishing Sculpture.” At first this sculpture just seems like a lump of patchwork fabric along with fake human limbs. Many people who view this work have no idea that there is a living person under the fabric.

Another work of Isenstein’s is “Rug Rug Rug Rug Rug” (2009). This piece consists of a bear rug, sheep rug, wolf rug, woman rug, and rug. I really like this piece because it shows the different animals killed to be made into a rug. The fact that she made herself into a rug brings to light how absurd it is to turn other animals into rugs.

Besides portraying herself as an inanimate object, Isenstein’s work also depicts her as other characters. In her “Performa 05 Biennial,” she wrote and also performed a radio program. The topic of the program was: “a recent book about plastic surgery’s effect on popular music, using Michael and Cher as examples.”

I really like Isenstein’s work because it makes her audience view the world in a different way. Her work gives importance to inanimate objects, which makes human’s lives much easier on a daily basis. I think that Isenstein’s work is really interesting because it is a hybrid of performance and sculpture. Her art is different from other artists because her art is a combination of different mediums.