51²è¹Ý

In A Rush
January 24 – March 9, 2025

Opening Reception

January 24 from 5 – 7 p.m.
Pollock Gallery, Expressway Tower

Julia Jalowiec

Underscored by her improvisational techniques and an overriding feeling of immediacy due to a cancer diagnosis, Julia Jalowiec reveals a preoccupation with mortality and absence in her exhibition. She transforms subjects – often infused with superhero-like vitality and resilience – into symbols of courage and stability. Her work, marked by motifs like helmets and goggles, reframes personal experiences of illness and disability into narratives of protection and triumph, embodying her refusal to be defined by limitations.

A queer artist born in Dallas, TX, Jalowiec holds a B.F.A. from 51²è¹Ý Meadows (2018) and an M.F.A. from Columbia University (2022). In 2019, she was named a Mercedes-Benz Financial Emerging Artist and was in residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. She was a 2020 Nasher Sculpture Center artist grant recipient. Her work has been exhibited at The Jewish Museum (NYC), Kates-Ferri Projects (NYC), Half Gallery (NYC), the Amarillo Museum of Art, Arts Fort Worth, Site131, Ro2 and Craighead Green Gallery as part of New Texas Talent. In 2023, she was in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture.

In December 2023, Jalowiec was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She passed away in March 2024 at the age of 49.

four chairs - to remember you all (2023)

Artist Statement

In Julia Jalowiec’s art, improvisation is essential. Subjects begin from something familiar, then branch off suddenly toward other worlds. Mark-making is fast and unfussy; methods and materials are often spontaneous. Her cast of characters possess superhero attributes like confidence, strength, and vitality, leading to fairytale endings. These subjects and methods are not naive; rather, Jalowiec’s acute awareness of her mortality demanded urgency and transformation.

Key moments recounted by Jalowiec’s friend and cohort member Kaela Mei-Chee Chambers encapsulate this theme. One occurred during orientation at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (June 2023):

“We were sitting next to each other and they were talking about effective communication and fight-or-freeze responses. They were talking about fawning: this kind of response, like, ingratiating yourself, becoming sweet and small and docile in the face of a threat. And I had drawn a little fawn on my paper. Julia pointed at this fawn and whispered ‘I want to put a helmet on it.’ I was so touched by that protective gesture. So then we made a fresco together. I said, ‘Julia, I'll make the fawn and then you can come in and transform it. You can draw all over it and make it a strong fawn and put the helmet on it.’ I remember discussing this in her studio and she was really adamant: ‘Kaela, I don't want for you to be stuck with the fawn. I want you to draw all over the fawn. I want us to become super deer. I want us to be transformed. I want us to never be fawns again.’”

Helmets are a common motif in Jalowiec’s work. They reframe the memory of her recovery from brain surgery when she was nine, recontextualizing disability into something joyful and triumphant and protective. Likewise, goggles recall the wrap-around eyeglasses she wore as a toddler, and telephones served as de facto communicators following her mama’s death in 2010. After Jalowiec’s breast cancer in 2012, she constructed numerous medical- and emergency-themed objects. In another memory of Jalowiec, this time at grad school at Columbia University (2021), Chambers recalled:

“Later in the semester, some drama went down. I remember being so infuriated – how could anybody be hurting Julia? I remember finding her in the print shop after she removed herself from the situation and being like, ‘Julia! This is so not okay!’ I was so upset. And she just replied ‘Yeah, it's not okay. But you know what? I don’t have time for this. I'm in a rush.’”

Jalowiec didn’t identify as a cancer survivor; she wouldn’t be defined or judged by what she couldn’t do. However, making work underscoring the longing, urgency, and desperation demanded by chronic illness was inescapable. She very literally inscribed “I just want to be old,” “I deserve to live,” “I am so tired,” and similar petitions directly onto surfaces, and frequently depicted how illness ravaged her body. Thus, many artworks exude her protectiveness and self-assurance while being shrouded in the promise of her temporality – a guarantee that energized her practice and imbued her work with a sense of immediacy.