The Paseo Project is excited to welcome Jessica Blinkhorn back to Taos as 2021’s first Artist in Residence. Blinkhorn is a visual artist and performance artist based out of Atlanta, GA. She is dedicated to the evocation of social empathy and advocacy for individuals with disability issues by way of visual works, performance, and writing. An instructor in the Fine Arts for Georgia State University and Perimeter Colleges and Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, her work has been hailed “abrasively insightful,” “an educational exploration,” and “satirical sadism.”

Blinkhorn was a featured artist at the 2019 PASEO Festival, where she fell in love with Taos and northern New Mexico. However, she took note of the many, many access challenges in the area, and sent us a proposal to come back and address our community’s needs more specifically.

“Reverence: We Three” will be a series of performances held in areas with a lack of accessibility. As a wheelchair user, Blinkhorn will use her own form as an object of reverence, placing herself in front of areas where accessibility is a challenge. While in position, she will be wearing all white and joined by two empty wheelchairs. Looking straight ahead, no one else will exist, symbolic of the way individuals with disabilities feel on a daily basis.

“My works are an awareness of humanity and what it means to be human,” says Jessica. “As an individual living with a disability, I serve as a reminder of what is, what could be, and what we tend to forget. I am not

broken but the world around me and infrastructures where we all exist are and I aim to bring awareness through the use of ceremonial-like performances.”

During Blinkhorn’s residency, June 1 – June 28, she  presented “Reverence: We Three” every Friday night, locations were announced weekly on Instagram and Facebook. She also offered a free artist talk at the Harwood Museum’s Arthur Bell Auditorium on June 8th at 5:30pm. Finally, The Paseo Project in partnership with the Taos Center for the Arts will presented a free screening of Crip Camp on Sunday, June 13th at 2pm, with a 4pm Q&A with Blinkhorn and the film’s co-directors.

This project was supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts and Revolt Gallery.

About the artist: Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn is a visual artist and performance artist based out of Atlanta, GA. She is an instructor in the Fine Arts for Georgia State University and Perimeter Colleges and Callanwolde Fine Arts Center. She has performed throughout Atlanta, in Chicago’s Rapid Pulse Performance Festival, the Inverse Performance Festival in Fayetteville, AR, Art in Odd Places, New York, NY, and, most recently, Bubbly Creek Performance Festival in the suburb of Bridgeport in Chicago, IL. Her work has been hailed “abrasively insightful,” “an educational exploration,” and “satirical sadism.”