About Jennifer Vanderpool

Biography

A native of the Mahoning Valley in northeast Ohio, now working in Los Angeles, Jennifer Vanderpool is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and writer. Through her practice she values questioning, particularly the questioning of equity issues. Her social art practice investigates the working class and working-class labor. Her practice emerged after she embraced her disinvested hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. Her Ukrainian immigrant family’s stories serve as a creative foundation to investigate the lives of other manual, industrial, and agricultural laborers and their communities. She centers the traumas of disenfranchised peoples and the places they inhabit, and she highlights the cultural amnesia perpetuating the status quo. Vanderpool creates a storytelling platform within the mode of public discourse that underscores structural inequalities and calls for social reform.

Exhibitions

Vanderpool has exhibited internationally at the National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow; Kroshytskyi Art Museum in collaboration with ArtPlatz, Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine; Duna Galéria, Budapest, Hungary; Heritage Space and Hanoi AdHoc, Hà Nội, Việt Nam; Stenersenmuseet, Oslo; RACA, Copenhagen; Kalmar Konstmuseum, Virserums Konsthall, Designarkivet, and Abandoned, Sweden; Victory Gallery & Museum, UK; Nina Menocal Gallery and Zona Maco México Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; Galería Sextante, Centro Colombo Americano, and Mercadito & Mentidero, Bogotá; No Lugar – Arte Contemporáneo and La Huerta y La Maquina and Museo de Arte, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuado. In the U.S. she has exhibited at L.A. Louver, Edward Cella + Architecture, AMcE Creative Arts, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Wende Museum and Cold War Archive Riverside Art Museum, Butler Institute of American Art, and other venues in Brooklyn, Houston, Atlanta, Kansas City, Tulsa, Los Angeles and around Southern California.

Public Art Commissions

She completed a mural for the British charity Open Door in Birkenhead, UK, and a triptych print for the University of La Verne’s “An Artful Reframing, Inclusive Voices” initiative.

Awards

Vanderpool’s work has been awarded exhibition funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, British Academy Leverhulme Trust, US-UK Fulbright Commission, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Ohio Arts Council, Kunstrådet: Danish Arts Council, Kulturrådet: Swedish Arts Council, Malmö Stad, and DéPOT, Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time—funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and collaborating councils in Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Vanderpool and the UCSB Isla Vista Liaison were awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America grant for her community art project in Isla Vista, California.

Reviews and Interviews

Vanderpool’s exhibitions have been reviewed and discussed in many leading publications including The New York Times, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Artillery Magazine, ArtScene, Angeleno, ArtUS, Sculpture, Art Ltd., Art Papers, Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Houston Chronicle, Kansas City Star, and Tulsa World. Internationally, her work has been covered in the Mexican publications El Universal and Time Out México, Colombian publications El Tiempo and Fotografia Colombiana, Ukrainian newspapers Slava Sevastopolya and Sevastopolskaya Gazeta, Danish newspaper Politiken, and numerous Swedish newspapers including Dagens Nyheter and Sydsvenskan.

She has been interviewed on CNN, KPCC Southern California Public Radio, Public Radio Tulsa, Sveriges Radio, Lorry København, Ukrainian National Television, Voice of Vietnam, and Vietnam Internet Television (VITV) among others.

Artist - in - Residence and Visiting Artist

Vanderpool has been a resident artist at HOTHOUSE UCLA/Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, Pitzer College, Claremont, and Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena.

She has spoken about her practice at the United Nations Vietnam, Vietnamese Institute of Art & Cultural Studies, and RMIT University, Việt Nam; Universiteit van Amsterdam and Institute of the Arts, Deventer, Netherlands; University of Lincoln and University of Liverpool UK; Jorge Tadeo Lozano University and Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia; Neringos Gimnazija, Lithuania; California College of the Arts; Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg; other U.S. universities.

Publications

Vanderpool and Colin Gardner co-edited the anthology Performative Representation of Working-Class Laborers: The Work Hard for the Money (Palgrave Macmillan). She published an article about her practice in the Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture journal and an essay in the second edition of Car Bombs to Cooke Tables: The Youngstown Anthology (Belt + Arcadia Publishing).

Curatorial

Vanderpool organized an exhibition at Centro Colombo Americano, Bogotá, and curated shows at venues around southern California. Vanderpool and Việt Lê co-curated Love in the Time of War which opened at UC Santa Barbara and traveled to SF Camerawork in San Francisco. The collaborative curatorial team of Ciara Ennis and Vanderpool organized Duty of Care at Collective Arts Incubator in Los Angeles. They co-curated MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal at Pitzer College Art Galleries, which the National Endowment for the Arts awarded an Arts Works Grant. The exhibition included manifestos created by invited artists hanging next to ones produced during workshops at the Inmates’ Art Programs at California Institution for Women Corona and the California Rehabilitation Center Norco Men’s Prison Educational Programs.

Vanderpool has spoken about her curatorial practice at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the University of Washington, Seattle, and A Space, Hà Nội. She also co-organized a panel with Ennis for the International Sculpture Center’s Culture and Community Conference.

Teaching

She has been a visiting artist teaching at Ölands Konst Skolan, Sweden; Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia; University of Sheffield, UK. Currently, Vanderpool is a lecturer in the Art Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Education

Vanderpool holds an Independent, Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Art Critical Practices in Trauma Studies from UC Santa Barbara. Her doctoral research fields included Art Theory Praxis, Film & Media Studies, and Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies. She earned her MFA from UCSB, where she was a UC Regents Fellow, and studied art history at Emory University.
Leiden, Netherlands | 2020

“Performing Imaginary Life,” Sensing Style: Subcultural Movements in the 21st Century, Leiden University

Flyer for Artist Talk, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands, “Performing Imaginary Life,” Sensing Style: Subcultural Movements in the 21st Century Conference. December 11, 2020
Ha Noi, Vietnam | 2021

Keynote Speaker, 'Surviving the Fantasies of Modernization' Ha Noi Ad Hoc and RMIT Vietnam, with support from UNESCO

Flyer for Keynote Speaker, 'Surviving the Fantasies of Modernization' Ha Noi Ad Hoc and RMIT Vietnam, with support from UNESCO, Ha Noi, Vietnam Jennifer discussed her ongoing project, Garment Girl, which investigates women's labor in the global textile industry. Her co-presenter was Mila Rosenthal, a human rights educator and professor at Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights. She spoke about the March 8 Textile Factory, a significant site for the Vietnamese Communist Party's efforts in the 1960s and 1970s to manufacture a modern socialist society, economy, city, and family. Michal Teague, Design Studies lecturer at RMIT Hanoi City campus, moderated the discussion.
Quito, Ecuador| 2021

Artist Talk, Flores para el Trueque Museo de Arte, Universidad San Francisco de Quito

Flyer for Artist Talk, Museo de Arte, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador November 18, 2021
Cardiff, Wales | 2022

Global Wales Fulbright Forum

Flyer for Artist Talk, Global Wales Fulbright Forum, Cardiff, Wales. April 8, 2022
Liverpool, UK | 2022

Centre for the Culture of Everyday Life, the University of Liverpool

Flyer for Artist Talk in Conversation with Dr. Vid Simoniti, Centre for the Culture of Everyday Life, the University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK May 17, 2022
Derby, UK | 2025

Untold Stories: Social Activism through Art and Research Arts and Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield

Flyer for Artist Talk, Arts and Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, UK May 24, 2022
Sheffield, UK | 2023

Creating Thriving Post-Industrial Cities, Festival of Debate

Flyer for Symposium Creating Thriving Post-Industrial Cities, Festival of Debate, Sheffield, UK Jennifer and Dr. Lizzy Craig-Atkins, from the University of Sheffield, co-organized this event. The symposium evolved from Jennifer Vanderpool's ongoing social practice art exhibitions, “Untold Stories,” a series of community-specific and site-responsive exhibitions that have occurred in the Deindustrialized Midwest Region of the U.S.A. and the Industrial North of England. Panellists offered multivocal perspectives, including workers, activists, artists, and scholars from Liverpool, UK; Sheffield, UK; Akron, Ohio; and Youngstown, Ohio. May 22, 2023
Birkenhead, UK | 2023

Crafting a Vibrant Future, Open Door Charity

Flyer for Artist Talk and Craftivism Workshop at Open Door Charity, Birkenhead, UK.

Mary 31, 2023
Belfast, Northern Ireland | 2024

Queen Mary’s University Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time, Summer Institute

Flyer for Lecture, Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time, Summer Institute, Queen Mary’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Jennifer co-taught the Graduate Workshop Integrating Arts-Based and Community-Based Approaches in Post-Industrial Memory Research with Dr. Guilherme Pozzer from the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. June 2024
Glasgow, Scotland | 2024

Gender, Family and Deindustrialization, University of Strathclyde Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time, Annual Conference

Flyer for Artist Talk, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, at the Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time, Annual Conference June 20, 2024
Sheffield, UK | 2024

Crafting the Past, University of Sheffield

Flyer for Artist Talk, Empowering Communities through Creative Writing, Visual Narratives, Memory, and Place-Making, The University of Sheffield. June 29, 2024
Sheffield, UK | 2024

Festival of Archeology, Council for British Archaeology

Flyer for Workshops, Sheffield Crafting the Past Online Workshops, Council for British Archaeology.

Dr. Gui Posser and Dr. Jennifer Vanderpool offered online workshops on creative writing and visual storytelling to address challenges faced by post-industrial communities.

July 27, 2024, and August 2, 2024

Los Angeles, CA | 2025

Call Festival, UCLA School of Law

Flyer for Artist Talk, Connecting Art and Law for Liberation, UCLA Law School Visionary artists, activists, attorneys, advocates, legal scholars, and community members shared innovative, cutting-edge collaborations at the intersection of ART and LAW - aimed at imagining a world without prisons, policing, and surveillance. Presented with Los Angeles-based curator Rachel Schmid. April 19, 2025
Derby, UK | 2025

CivicLAB Annual Conference, University of Derby

Flyer for Artist Talk, CivicLAB Annual Conference, University of Derby

Neighbourhood Assembly: Arts-led, co-productive research & practice for comfortable, energy-efficient homes, green skills and quality jobs, and thriving places.

Presented with Dr Rachel Macrorie, Nottingham Trent University.

June 25, 2025