GINA JELINSKI

about the artist

Gina is a documentarian, archivist, and musician who over the past decade has been handling rare plant life and antiquarian books. Her work has been published for Modern Painter, Cabinet Magazine, The Center for the Art of Translation, and The Analogue Preservation Network. She's exhibited for Camp X Copenhagen, SFAQ, Black Hole Cinema, Form Content (UK), ATA Theater, MASS MOCA, Verge Gallery (Australia), The Climate Theater, Betalevel, Illuseum Berlin (Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 9), and The Belgium Anthology of Optimism at Centre d'Arts.

Previously her archival endeavors were held at the Luis Buñuel Private Library, and USC Roski. She’s worked as a harp tuner, photography instructor, dishwasher, janitor, and a caregiver for disabled women. Gina hosts Hey, Venus! Radio, and also curates their line of plant medicine. She is a CalArts graduate and shoots film on the Zenza Bronica.

an elaboration

Gina was born in 1982 on the umbilicus feather of a strawberry VCR -the daughter of a German guitarist, and an Italian piano player, who once ran a small video game shop in the San Fernando Valley. Gina spent her first few weeks of life in a glass incubator. Upon arriving home from the hospital, her doctors set up a video camera in order to document her behavior and development. At 5 years old she was diagnosed with scoliosis, and soon after became obsessed with documenting her every-day through tape recordings, video, and photographs. Although a high school drop out, Gina was awarded a scholarship to attend CalArts. She says of that time, 

—"There was very little censorship [at the institute]. Faculty made sure that you had a safe place to live, enough funding to put food on the table, as many of us were orphans in a way. We were taught that rules were in place only to be dismantled. Classes were often held outdoors, clothing was optional, students made love in the mezzanine while painting with excrements their 18 page thesis on Indonesian plant life. It was wild. Val Verde became an accidental commune. But that was quite a few years ago. It’s too bad CalArts became, so timid in its more recent years. Although if you try hard enough you can still taste the feral roots. “

On her latest project, The Nicotine Pillow Book Tapes:

“Eighty four tapes at 120 minutes each, which is roughly who knows how many hours, at this point…twenty two episodes, for now...it’s a vulnerable project, only be available for the creatures documented (at it’s completion). So it’s more of a gift to my loved ones, those closest to me. Y2k takes place, then 9/11 —we all made our own clothing, played music beneath bridges and on rooftops, ate mushrooms. The boys wore our clothing, and we wore theirs. There’s footage of CalArts…as well as an unusual happening between two spectral specimens, whom first encountered their rapture back in 1988: yet another whirlwind documented…”

PORTFOLIO/PROJECTS

THE NICOTINE PILLOW BOOK TAPES, An uncensored coming of age fairytale from an era where missing an episode of the X-Files, and the aftermath of 9/11 amidst a Cocteau Twins mix tape was the extent of your worries. Series chronicles the lives of six close friends, prior to social media's emergence; as they encounter love and experiment with hallucinogens. These mishaps take place between the years of 1999-2007, in and around the SFV, as well as a small town built on a landfill better known as Santa Clarita. 

SLEDOVANE -Sound Works, Recorded between 1999-2024 on analog equipment. Instruments include guitar, percussion, upright bass, harp, clarinet, violin, accordion, piano, and vocals.

BEYOND THE MARGIN OF TIME: Intimate Morphologies of Plant Life, Botanical photography series. 5X7 Softcover, 110 pages, 168 photographs. Featuring all sorts of cheeky flowering sunbeams -wild, native or ‘becoming native’. “According to the Gaillardia, even the angiosperm get jealous of the orphaned natal plum. And the waxy, yet delirious, stamen of the Echinopsis spachiana casts its spell onto the honey bee. Willingly, I surrender to the behaviors behind each botanical specimen, as a moonbeam does the calypso in my subconscious. As our pollinators and habitats are threatened, and droughts permeate our counties, making fire season the most unwanted holiday to date. You may ask what all of this may look like, but only plant life itself can reveal what it feels like. I can only hope that I've illustrated these sacred dances between bumbling human being and enlightened flora, here in this tiny book.” English. Colour & Black and White. Signed Limited Edition. 

HEY VENUS RADIO, Podcast. An analog sound collage chronicling epiphanies in music, literature, plant life—and everything in between. Each episode includes a curated playlist from the archive; featuring over an hour of tracks -from Shoegaze to Ethiopian funk, Czech folk & beyond. A collaboration with Leslie Saucer Radio.

IF I WERE BUT ILLUSION’S VOICE,  446 pp. Hybrid fiction/nonfiction. An erotic avant-garde novel about a playful group of outcasts who, through their studies in linguistics and thievery, spiral into a whirlwind; illuminating the rites of desire, poverty, and familial folly. When Nino, a thirty-something ornithologist, takes to living in her car after graduating from college, she is joined by her research partner to leave the life they know far behind them. After months of this new found freedom, gutter bathing became exhausting and insomnia had set in —the two women part ways. Our anti-hero, Nino,  serendipitously finds herself in an alternate universe, coincidentally in her old home town; one increasingly punctuated by a deserted Los Angeles and inhabited by exotic creatures of extraordinary exception -e.g., a fleet of Satyr Tragopans; a rare species of Himalayan bird that mysteriously shows up in the San Fernando Valley. Nino reluctantly continues her work as a dishwasher and unlicensed therapist for the locals, while discovering another unexpected species at a deli across from an abandoned male brothel— his name was Sydney; a spirited house cleaner and underground deli-dancer. Little known to Nino at first, her muse resided on a homestead of which contained a body of water that would aid in the travel from one universe to another. Oh, and by the way -the ocean beneath Sydney’s shack aided in an unrecognized from of parthogenesis…thus Nino impregnates Sydney. Needless to say, the two join forces amidst the collapse of the internet, and the pathetic social landscape they spent a lifetime avoiding.

LADY MOON VALLEY, Non-fiction video documentary series. Hi8/DV/8mm. 268 mins. A lucid portrait of a family which follows the unusual story of a woman named Sally; a self-taught multi-media artist and ancestress of Polish immigrants, pimps, and vaudevillians. Being raised amidst a poverty stricken Chicago in the 1930’s, our heroine reveals her mischievous perspectives through song and dance, and confessions on a tape recorder. Sally recollects her childhood encounters in butcher shops, her various lovers, the truth about her father, and her dozens of projects around the house. Although what is soon revealed is the fact that the her entire family also resides at this house, and their tales of hope and desperation become Sally’s story, too. Music by Beth Kleist, and VWC. Format: DVD NTSC.

ODPOLEDNE TV, a video series which reveals documentations of uncensored rituals, while proposing unconventional exercises for the olfactory senses. These pieces tend to vary in shape and smell, functioning as a bewildering platform for the documentary genre. Hi8/DV/8mm

FLIRTING WITH YOU BY THE CHRYSANTHEMUM, Photography series. Over the span of five years the artist conducted private case studies with individuals on the subjects of phobia, intimacy, and sites of trauma. Through these documents she would follow up with questions pertaining to their answers, and photograph the areas at which she would sit to read (and respond to) their correspondences. These images were shot on film, processed, and placed into the files with each individual case study. A sort of  topography illustrating the deepest fears and desires of people in communities which are scattered about like memories.

INSTINCT AMONGST ANTIGONE, Photography series. Series of 60 portraits, landscapes, and self-portraits — spanning a 16 year period which documents intimate encounters with various individuals, and sites of particular importance.

All projects © 2024