New York-based artist Jordan Casteel has rooted her practice in community engagement, painting from her own photographs of people she encounters. Posing her subjects within their natural environments, her nearly life-size portraits and cropped compositions chronicle personal observations of the human experience.
“What’s most exciting to me,” she told Vogue about her work Aurora (2020), originally conceived for the magazine’s September 2020 issue, “is being given artistic integrity and being able to choose the person to be my sitter — someone who reflects a portion of my own identity — and then to do that truly in the medium of my choice. This is the way that I speak to the world.”
Watch above to hear Casteel reflect more on her portrait Aurora (2020) and her broader practice. The artist is joined in conversation with Curator of Contemporary Art Eungie Joo.
