Jennie C. Jones's group exhibition, Figure/Ground: New Criteria at Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, will be on view January 17–April 26, 2026.
Voloshyn Gallery's press release follows:
In Western art, the relationship between figure and ground has long informed creative practices. Through techniques like illusionism, abstraction, multiple perspectives, and disruptions of the flat picture plane, artists have manipulated composition, depth, and perception to distinguish between forms and their background—while also showing how deeply the two are connected.
Figure/Ground: New Criteria is inspired by cultural historian Sarah Lewis’s concept of “groundwork aesthetics,” exploring figure-ground relationships and their connection to social tension. It builds on Lewis’s work, which—set against the expansion of Stand Your Ground laws across the United States since 2005, laws that broadly define rights to use lethal self-defense against perceived threats—describes a range of artistic interventions that reimagine “the literal and figurative meaning of ground.” Primarily featuring works from the Henry collection created in the twenty-first century, Figure/Ground reflects a period in which hard-won civil rights and claims to self-determination have been eroded across the US, disproportionately affecting Black, Brown, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized communities.
