DIGITAL RESIDENT
Jabari Jefferson

May 2021

Jabari Jefferson Jabari C. Jefferson is a mixed media oil painter based in Washington DC. His vibrant, paintings are layered with found materials such as books, fabric, paper, ink, acrylic, and oil paints. His process involves searching local Black communities for once-owned items and repurposing them into usable pieces that add to his overall palette of materials. Inspired by ritualistic practices, Jabari believes in the transfer of energy in the materials from their previous owners.  The subject of his work is self-education, self-development, and learning self-identity with the goal is to literally communicate what the process of learning looks like. Jabari uses the symbolism of a library of books to promote the message of mentally and spiritually enhancing one's self through reading, reflecting, and learning. His primary intended audiences are Black communities due to lack of representation in these categories of artistic conversation.

Jabari’s ongoing body of work, The Library Series, draws attention to the pursuit of understanding who we are and transitioning into a deeper, more complex way of interpreting the world around us. Metaphorically, we are all living libraries composed of experiences, wisdom, history, and heritage. The aesthetics of a traditional library was instilled in Jabari as a young man by his father, a librarian at the Library of Congress, and his grandfather, a retired archivist for The National Archives. Having constant access to an impressive assortment of books around him inspired the aesthetic of multicolored vertical compositions and the optical effect they created.