Bio

Jena Favinger is a writer and visual artist based in the Florida Keys. She was a participant in AWP's Writer to Writer Mentorship, Bread Loaf Environmental Conference, and Tin House Summer Workshop. Her poetry has been published in Hayden's Ferry Review, SWWIM, North American Review, and Black Fox Literary Magazine. Her digital photomontage, “Relative Dichotomy” was selected to be in the Anne McKee Fine Art Auction, 2024. She can be found on Instagram @jena.fav.

Statement

I am drawn to the intimacy between photos laying on top of each other. On the surface, my work in digital photomontage reflects my desire to be one with nature. Nature is free from the desire to define its existence, therefore free from the motive to make sense of it. Nature simply “is” and in pursuit of expressing the tension between that "isness" and the cognitive "sense-making" process we experience as humans, I lean into liminal space through surrealism. However, not seeing it from a hierarchical standpoint, but as the accumulation of factors encompassed prior to, presently, and going forward. From this POV liminal space could be perceived not as an empty gap, but infinite space. I feel an impulse to challenge the “black and white” definitions used to make sense of our existence and am fascinated by how that could play into a subconscious conditioning of separateness. I strive to bridge the gap between definitions such as the material and immaterial, light and dark, malleable and solid, and transcend the limitations of language.