Cassandra C. Jones is a remix artist who collects thousands of other people's photographs, in both print and digital form. Jones uses digital photography to create collage and video works that tell stories and present a prismatic reflection of our self-involved, technology-based, snap-happy contemporary lifestyles. They do this to offer a space of possibility, growth, and discovery. Each piece unfolds a complex cluster of social messages that infiltrate our cursory habits of perception and comprehension. The final work is a coalescence of images that intersect politics and pop culture within the lascivious American backdrop. Sociopolitical messages are interwoven in a cleverly composited miscellany, layering the erotic and whimsical, the beautiful and grotesque.
Jones is adept at burying corporeality and absurdity in the seemingly ornamental. Their work is aposematic: it utilizes superficial appeal to draw the viewer before demonstrating the depth of grit of her work, infused with personal narratives, religious allusion, and societal critique; it teaches us to carefully consider things that are bright and eye-catching. Good Cheer Wallpaper is a site-specific wallpaper installation that assembles photographs of teenage and adolescent cheerleaders into an array of kaleidoscopic wheels reminiscent of mandalas. The piece examines the uncomfortable yet undeniable relationship between girlhood, family, and pornography inherent in the high-kicks and upskirt flashes of youth cheerleading.
More recently, Jones has created site-specific wallpaper installations that become a deeply personal medium while the work breathes new life into the historical narrative of the piece, animating the past with the pace of contemporary life.