Jessica Dillon (B. 1986 Pennsylvania, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist working through the body to manifest and mobilize a gestural language that is delivered through a selective framing via costume, architecture, and technology. Dillon creates a narrative through fragments of different actions and media - an installation of moments made across time; drawing, sound, gesture, sculpture, video, live body, text and performance residue. She transforms the general understanding of manifested terms such as a note of thought into a drawing and compares that to a photo which formally then stands in the question of drawing and shifts its appearance through the context as such. Dillon uses history and biology as a lens to produce and direct the work which allows the gestures to exist in the improvisational now. The ever shifting context of the artist also prompts this “now” becoming a co-conspirator allowing the gesture to rise in attention and emerge out of the everyday into the artist’s hands momentarily highlighted for others to see. Growing up through the lens of rural Pennsylvania, Dillon, who now works out of Los Angeles transforms her local sensibilities into global connectedness by investigating through sensual awareness, encountering material by extending out from her body to the immediate environment.
Dillon received her B.F.A. from Otis College of Art and Design in 2013 where she studied Fine Arts, Graphic Design and Creative Writing. She graduated from the New Genres department where she began making performative video, painting, and sculptural work while studying under Meg Cranston, Chris Wilder, and Alison O’Daniel. In 2013, Jessica Dillon began exhibiting her artwork and curating shows around Los Angeles through artist run projects and galleries such as Hilltop, Trunk Gallery or One of Us. While continuing to produce and exhibit her artwork at venues such as Scranch, One Woman Shows, or Human Resources, Dillon received her M.F.A. from Art Center College of Design in 2018 where she studied with Timothy Martin, Lita Albuquerque, Bruce Hainley, Shahryar Nashat, Adam Linder, Annette Weisser, and Chris Kraus.