Jared Theis: Statement

The past ten years I have been building a type of personal mythology or system that follows a group of fantastical creatures through time and stages of evolution. These investigations are realized through ceramic sculpture, textiles, installation, performance and video. I use the system as a lens to look back at life on earth, human societies and our own evolutionary path. I’m particularly interested in vulnerability and how organisms adapt to their environment. The narratives in my work are reinterpretations of mythological themes I learned from childhood. I explore the origins of these characters, their relationship to their environment and spiritual growth.

Many of the characters are driven by primal instincts. Over time some have evolved and discovered new means of engaging their environment. I use extinction events, deaths and natural disasters as a means of accelerating this process. I move back and forth through time where events that occurred thousands of years before affect the outcome of the present and future. Some of the characters have a childlike innocence while others are manipulative and cruel. They awkwardly navigate their world to the best of their abilities.

I play the role of these characters, utilizing sculptural suits that connect me to these spaces. The suit becomes a means of entering these worlds and exploring different states of being. During the performances I imagine myself as a survivalist creature, enacting a series of rituals that have deep roots in my own experiences. I see these rituals as a means of reconnecting with a very distant, deeply embedded part of myself. I document the performances through video and use the documentation as a foundation for building the mythology.

The work speaks to a kind of nostalgia or sentimentality from another time. This human longing of a utopian world where “everything’s going to be alright”. Music videos and children’s television programming of the 1970s and 80s are important references in building the mythology as well as shape-shifting performers like David Bowie, Prince and Billie Eilish. I’m also attracted to kitsch, camp and questioning structures that determine what is meaningful in our culture. I like to arrive at larger issues through humor. As the characters evolve, many elements from our cyber-obsessed culture have entered the work such as video gaming, fashion and social media. One character has a cooking show, another is a karaoke singer, another a tragic figure. They exist in an alternate world strangely similar to our own.