DANIELLE JACQUES
DJ | ARTWORKS brings to you the work of award-winning artist Danielle Jacques.
Danielle Jacques is a British, London-based multimedia artist. Her work explores altered states of consciousness such as meditation or trance through the mediums of photography, video and installation. Her work fuses the material and the digital, spanning both the tangible and the virtual. Danielle draws references from the cultural practices which induce altered states of consciousness - from Buddhist meditation to electronic raves, from hypnotherapy to shamanic rituals. By transmitting the sensual attentiveness of the maker to the viewer, Danielle offers the potential for transcendental experiences.
In 2020 Danielle earned a distinction in her masters in Visual Arts: Fine Art Digital from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. She received the Mercers’ Arts Award from the Mercers Company in 2020. Danielle has exhibited in multiple group shows in London, including the Saatchi Gallery
For an overview of her current practice please watch the video at the bottom of the page.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Mindfulness and meditation came to Danielle as tools to cope with the stresses of modern-day life. Over the years, this interest has ballooned into an inquiry into mental health, perception and transcendental experiences.
Through photography, video, and audiovisual installation Danielle explores altered states of consciousness. She references the cultures which support altered states - from Buddhist philosophy to electronic club culture, from self-hypnosis to shamanic rituals. Danielle produces work that intersects the material and the digital, spanning both the tangible and the virtual.
By engaging with the essence of ink, water, and new media–Danielle has developed a practice she describes as “meditation-in-action”. She explores her materials with sensuous attentiveness, inducing a heightened state of awareness. Grounded in contemplative looking, she investigates her materials as simple objects appreciated for their sensuality, closely observing texture, form, and colour. Using repetition and movement she finds synchrony with the physical qualities of her materials. By acting from a place of innocence, wonder and delight, she discovers the aesthetic rather than creates it.
Photography, film and print solidify these visual meditations to elongate, interpret, and transmit her transcendental experiences. Danielle transforms photos and videos from her vast archive through both analogue and digital processes. Her work bounces between the physical and the virtual, between three-dimensional experience and two-dimensional representations. Each process tangles one work to another, producing new depths and emergent phenomena.
Engaging with the audience, and hearing their responses to the work, is consistently fascinating, surprising, and critical to developing future work. Through understanding how we perceive our inner and outer worlds, she plays on concepts of the real and the imaginary. The ultimate aim is to create experiential works which emulate altered states and engage the viewer in the sublime art of awareness.