Rainn Jackson is a queer, southern, interdisciplinary artist, and political organizer based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Their work has been shown in various galleries and publications including Amos Eno gallery in Brooklyn, Gallery Sabine in Chicago, IL, the Contemporary Cress gallery in Chattanooga, the Apothecary gallery in Chattanooga, the Activist magazine, Chattanooga Zine Fest, Dalton Gallery in Atlanta, and Dry Ice Gallery in Chattanooga. They are currently the Residency Fellow at Stove Works where they live on site with access to their own studio, and organize resident and gallery programs and activities.
Rainn Jackson’s art practice is a response to the oppressive, anti-queer, capitalist society they live in. Their art practice includes but is not limited to photography, video, collage, performance, and digital 3D art. In Rainn’s recent work, they examine the connection between queerness, gothicism, and technology including the insidious traumas of living in a world dominated by cisgender, heterosexual, colonialist ideas, and their own refusal to assimilate. Rainn connects digital technology imagery to the transgender experience; they define technology broadly and consider taking man made hormones a form of cyborgism. Their work is heavily informed by personal experiences regarding these issues. Rainn feels that sharing personal history can help create solidarity with other queer people who similarly struggle while simultaneously making those who are cisgender and/or heterosexual better understand queer insidious trauma through discomfort. In Rainn’s recent work the cisheterosexual gaze on queer people is turned back onto cisheterosexual culture; an invention of the queer gaze. Themes including nudity, kink, psychedelia, and sacrilege are utilized in order to disturb some audience members, while providing comfort to others deemed sexual deviants.