JENNIFER TURNBULL
Artist | Educator | Collaborator
Based in Philadelphia, PA, I am a Black Queer artist who works to advance justice for all my people using my tools: multidisciplinary performer, educator, dancer & choreographer, cultural organizer and collaborator.
Dance is my first language, photography my first love. The stage is my home, the streets are my playground, the parks are my canvas and the water is my sanctuary.
Art is the mechanism through which humans can connect with the earth: a grand living ecosystem.
When we are listening the breeze plays chimes for us and the drum syncs to our heartbeats. Art is the tool that opens us up, aids our understanding of each other and cements us to the earth. Artists wield this powerful tool, to transcend all barriers and remind us, to teach us, that we are all irrevocably interconnected to one another, bound by the elements to our spherical blue home, our mother.
Focus On Water
I am a movement artist. I move people through dance, through stories, through our collective demons into liberation with art. Let us move through equity to be collectively free by every means necessary.
-Jennifer Turnbull
Florida Project 2022
Wade in the Water
Underwater studies in light, color and movement.
Photos by: Shoog McDaniel
Costume & Vision: Jennifer Turnbull
As a Teaching Artist, Jennifer Turnbull develops (movement and visual) art-based curriculum that weaves in concepts of formal education creating relevance and space for self-determination.
Jennifer utilizes a lifetime of dance training to create most artwork in collaboration with art family.
Collaborations have led to multidisciplinary ensemble performance, dance, music and film projects with SWARM, BARETEETH and other Philadelphia-based artists. The artistic process is a space to get free and hold our liberation as truth. The product is a critique of that which holds us down and apart from each other and ourselves.
As part of BARETEETH
No Promised Land
Witness Work Sample of BareTeeth with Marie Alarcon & Ash Richards Southwest Roots residency at Bartram's Garden
As part of SWARM
Icebox Project Space: Marie Alarcon won a WOO award and invited SWARM members and others to present works in progress
Swarm / Pathways to Unknown Worlds - ICA Philadelphia June 2014
Jennifer is Co Director of Spiral Q with Liza Goodell where they unleash the power of art to connect people to their collective creative force for change.
Rise & Reconcile, Light on Black Spaces: Congo Square
Art IS the Changemaker: Culture Bearers & Social Justice
During the pandemic…
My basement studio became the space to process the rapid change, both in work and life. When faced with such uncertainty, my work shifted gears; becoming softer and more detailed.
dance helped me rage…
I could rant and rage and tell off a whole year. Call out all the things that irked me. My festering emotions needed an outlet, and so I released them - remembering how much more free and at peace I felt after. It helped me vent and find a new direction for my passions to lead in.
…explore and share imperfection.
My camera became my reflective mirror in this act of self-reflection. Experimenting with different editing techniques took time but also grew to become a new form of expression for me. It may not be perfect, but it's my process and something I'm happy to share here.