Join us for an artist talk with Jimena Vega at the Newark Public Library presented with the Price Institute at Rutgers-Newark. Vega will be discussing her work in relation to art, memory, immigration and plants.
Jimena Vega was born and raised in Ambato, a community in the Andean mountain of Ecuador. After experiencing a childhood full of traditions interwoven with nature, she immigrated to urban New Jersey
as a teenager to reunite with her family. In spite of the initial challenges and bewildering metropolitan cultural shock, Jimena persevered and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2012.
Drawing inspiration from her nature-filled childhood, her migration journey, and the cultural and artistic resilience of immigrant communities in the United States, Jimena began to explore diverse mediums such as illustration, sculpture, and art-making with organic materials. She also began participating in and facilitating women’s circles centered on plants, healing, oral history, and therapeutic art-making.
Her art and her workshops have been featured in diverse places, such as Guttenberg Arts, the Queens Museum, Rabbit Hole Farms in Newark, Passaic County Arts Center, St. Peter’s University, and Raíces Cultural Center. Recently, Jimena completed the NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program, and a residency at Wild Flower Sculpture Park at South Orange, New Jersey. Currently, she is pursuing a MFA in Printmaking at SUNY New Paltz.