Visiting Artists Program (VAP) Resource Guides

Jennifer Packer creates portraits, interior scenes, and still lifes that suggest a casual intimacy. Packer views her works as the result of an authentic encounter and exchange. The models for her portraits—commonly friends or family members—are relaxed and seemingly unaware of the artist’s or viewer’s gaze.

Packer’s paintings are rendered in loose line and brushstroke using a limited color palette, often to the extent that her subject merges with or retreats into the background. Suggesting an emotional and psychological depth, her work is enigmatic, avoiding a straightforward reading. “I think about images that resist, that attempt to retain their secrets or maintain their composure, that put you to work,” she explains. “I hope to make works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships really are.”

Packer was the 2012–13 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014–16. Her work was most recently featured in two major solo exhibitions: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, the largest survey of Packer’s work to date, presented at Serpentine Galleries, London (2020) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2021–22), and Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2021–22), her first exhibition on the west coast. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Tenderheaded, was shown at the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017) and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2018). Her work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and P.5 – Prospect New Orleans (2021). Packer currently lives and works in New York and is assistant professor at The Cooper Union.

Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Department of Painting and Drawing

Jennifer Packer. Photo: Manfredi Gioacchini

Gallery Representation

Sikkema Malloy Jenkins

Jennifer Packer Shows Us the Responsibility of Seeing
Seph Rodney | Hyperallergic | February 8, 2022

Jennifer Packer with Amber Jamilla Musser
Jennifer Packer and Amber Jamilla Musser | The Brooklyn Rail | December/January 2021-2022

Jennifer Packer: Painting as an Exercise in Tenderness
Aruna D’Souza | The New York Times | November 18, 2021
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login

At the Whitney, Jennifer Packer’s Portraits Capture the Messiness of Memory and Trauma
Isis Davis-Marks | Artsy | November 4, 2021

Jennifer Packer Portrays Friends Through the Haze of Memory
Allison Conner | Hyperallergic | August 9, 2021

Jennifer Packer and Hans Ulrich Obrist Discuss the Meaning and Method of Painting Today
Claude Adjil | Cultured Magazine | June 14, 2021

Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing
Claire Phillips | The Brooklyn Rail | February 2021

Jennifer Packer’s paintings pack a punch at the Serpentine
Matthew Holman | Apollo Magazine | January 11, 2021

Porfolio
Jennifer Packer | Callaloo, vol. 39 (1) | p. 543-550, 731 | Summer 2016
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Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing
Featuring over thirty works from the past decade, The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing is the largest survey of Jennifer Packer’s practice to date. Previously on view at the Whitney Museum of Art October 30, 2021–April 17, 2022.

Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.

SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977–98).