Jean-Luc Howell

When he was a curator at the IMA at Newfields, Bryn worked with staff and community organizers to bring large, collaborative efforts such as At the Crossroads: A Community Meal and Mónica Mayer's "El Tendedero" exhibition to Indianapolis. As part of his Creative Renewal project, Bryn wanted to learn how artists center community in their practice, so he made his first trip to Los Angeles in 2020. What surprised me is the extent to which I would need to develop a better understanding of myself in order to feel renewed. Sure, I traveled, but this was no vacation. This was a process of unpacking trauma, expelling toxicity, and embracing the unknown.

Bryn connected with several artists, including Bradley Hale, whose photographic work asserts the necessity of queer representation in the image economy. He visited Tatak Ng Apat Na Alon, a Filipino diasporic tribe that’s reviving and sustaining precolonial Filipino tattoo tradition. There, he met with Elle Festin, one of the founding elders. Elle fed me food I hadn’t had since I was a child, and after our 8-hour meeting, he invited me to join. So I am now learning about my mother, her parents, and her grandparents, as my family history will inform the structure and symbolism of my own tattoo.

Bryn and his partner have since moved to Oaxaca, Mexico, to help a friend develop and program a communitydriven, artist-activated botanical garden in San José del Pacífico. They’ll also be collaborating with Zapotec people and communities to honor indigenous thought and practice in relation to land stewardship and the preservation of local biodiversity. Without this opportunity, I don’t know that I would have had it in me to manifest the change necessary for me to be happy.

bryn jackson

artist & curator

"I am a changed person, and I understand myself to be capable of embracing and manifesting radical change."

Bryn Jackson

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