ABOUT
BIO
Jace Weyant is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from highschool at UNC School of the Arts with a concentration in Contemporary Dance, and she has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied Dance, Mathematics and Computer Science. She has worked as a dancer for Amanda + James, Evan Ray Suzuki, Katherine Fisher, and John Jasperse. She has also worked as a creative technologist for Salsa Stories and Safety Third Productions. Her own creative work stands at the intersection of the emotive and the mathematical, using both dance and technology to create otherworldly environments in which bizarre and fantastical scenes play out. She has shown her work at Transpecos, Center for Performance Research, Chez Bushwick, Fabled Narcissism, Summer Happenings Festival, Standard Vision Studios, Mono no Aware, and Astoria Film Festival. She has accepted residencies at Theater Mitu, Chez Bushwick and Impulstanz, and awards from the Youngarts Foundation, Astoria Film Festival, and Montreal Film Fest.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The principal objective of every piece of art I create is the task of making the art do something. It is action and reaction, the production of effects, which interests me. I resist the urge to say things, rather, I hope to center a more humble and real relationship between the work and the viewer. From within whichever combination of mediums my work is placed—dance, music, film, creative technology—the goal is to induce impactful and productive feeling.
I am interested in exploring the function of fantasy within processes of identification. Through a precise attention to character and tone, my work seeks to transform space and time toward the fantastic, to physicalize the unreality of the self and our surroundings. I search for fantastic images, visions, and stories which span across us. To me, these build spaces where we can strip each other back, allowing this act to reveal honest things within and to us.
Being transgender is to me intimately connected to this certain kind of transformation, and as such, my work is deeply informed by this identity. There is an embodied sense of continuous transition, of becoming, in my work. This is an extreme display of vulnerability, an openness which is almost natural to us trans individuals. It is a baring of the self for the sake of some sense of connection, both to others and to ourselves.
