Much of Jeremy Dean’s work is situated within a twenty year long effort of artmaking, research, and community engagement in the small coastal community of St. Augustine, FL where he lived for many years. In addition to various symbols of nationalism, the resulting work incorporates material that spans 150 years of history – Confederate monument foundations, Reconstruction era photographs, 1930’s redline maps, Civil Rights footage, tourism promotional films, and contemporary documentation – in a critical inquiry of American history and identity.
Because of the specific circumstances of his childhood, Dean never understood race in America the way most Americans understand it. For Dean, growing up, there was no sense of belonging to any particular place or culture, but rather feeling part of a shape shifting global world where identity is fluid and relative.
Dean was born in Lubbock TX, and spent his first few years on a working cattle ranch, before his parents felt the “call” and became itinerant foreign missionaries. By the time he was ten, he spoke several languages, had traveled to dozens of countries, and lived with indigenous people all over Central and South America, including tribes deep in the Amazon. Growing up, he and his brother were always the racial other, with distinct memories of cheeks pinched red and hair pulled or patted by people who had never seen a blond white boy and needed the confirmation of personal touch to know that he was indeed real. These fleeting encounters were occasional reminders of difference. For the most part, he and his brother simply disappeared barefoot and shirtless into the jungle alongside Shipibo children up the Ucayali River in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. The land, myriad cultures and distinctive individuals became teachers for other ways of being in the world.
His idea of America existed in the mythological retelling of history books. But the vision of the “Shining city on a hill” was shattered after moving back to the United States in the 80’s at the height of “Greed is good” consumer culture. Having never attended school, Jr. High felt like a dangerous jungle, filled with deadly maneaters, especially dressed in hand-me-down clothes and off brand shoes, the best his parents could afford. Landing in Texas and then Florida, he absorbed the painful legacy of the American South, glossed over by history books. The gap between American ideals and practice never squared. As a teenager he graduated high school early and moved to Hawaii, a place that is technically the 50th state, but it is in many ways, not America.
His unique upbringing conspired to forge this relativist sense of identity and instilled in him an outsider’s view of America with a critical eye towards notions of exceptionalism and white superiority that are foundational to this country. As an adult, he seeks to unravel the tangled mythology of American identity inherited from the broader culture and his politically conservative religious heritage. By reordering cyclical histories, his work often makes visible the architecture of whiteness in order to expose its foundational flaws.
His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Miami Herald, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Vogue, Juxtapoz, Art Slant, Current TV, ABC World Report, Huffington Post, Reuters, MSNBC, Gawker, Washington Post, Denver Post, among others, and countless blogs and niche media.
He has been exhibited nationally and internationally including solo shows at MOCA Jacksonville Fl, 21c Museum, Louisville KY and Angela Lee Contemporary, Hong Kong and prominent group shows “Language in Times of Miscommunication” at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, “In the Hot Seat” at Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, as well as The International Center of Photography Ny and Kunsthal KAdE, Netherlands with the art collective For Freedoms. Collections include: 21c Museum, Priztker Collection, New York Public Library-Prints collection, University of Maryland and numerous private collections. He has been an artist in Residence at Emmanuel College (Social Justice) Boston, Mass. and at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, CO (Sculpture) and upcoming fellow at MacDowell Colony, and a Keyholder resident at Lower East Side Printshop NY, and resident at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY.
His independent feature film Dare Not Walk Alone (2006), received numerous awards, a theatrical and TV release, and special screenings at The King Center, the Skirball Center, and Brooklyn Academy Of Music (BAM). He is the recipient of the Independent Southern Filmmakers Tour award and has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award. He was inducted into the Writers Guild of America 2008.