​​Invented Archives 

Mitsuko Brooks, Angie Jennings, Diana Sofia Lozano 

January 24 - March 3, 2023

Invented Archives explores ways of knowing rooted in care, affect, and speculation. Artworks by Mitsuko Brooks, Angie Jennings, and Diana Sofia Lozano gesture toward shared knowledge among various kinship networks, human and beyond. Brooks’ intimate mail art collages and large-scale paintings picture dispatches of solidarity, messages which traverse long distances to foster community. Jennings’s paintings of plants traditionally used for contraception and pregnancy termination reflect knowledge shared among women and disempowered individuals, the details of whose lives were rarely recorded for archival posterity. Confounding botanical taxonomies rooted in Western Imperialism, Lozano’s hybrid flora—naturally occurring, genetically modified, and imagined—speculate on the desires of non-human species. With strategies ranging from recuperation of marginalized knowledge to speculation on the unknown, works by Brooks, Jennings, and Lozano allude to a corpus of knowledge that transcends boundaries between fact and fiction. 

Mitsuko Brooks is a 1.5 generation artist & archivist of mixed settler Japanese and European descent, currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in Painting & Drawing from UCLA, BFA from Cooper Union, and MLIS & Certificate in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Materials from Queens College (CUNY). Her work has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic and The Ridgewood Times. She participated in residencies at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts SHIFT, The Wassaic Project; and The Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden. Brooks received grants from The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Common Field and The Sally Van Der Lier Fellowship. She has exhibited at The San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Arts, SOMArts, Smack Mellon, Materials for The Arts and Steve Turner. Brooks' zines, artist books and mail art collages are in permanent collections at Smithsonian's Archive of American Art, Canada's Artexte Information Centre, Barnard College's Library, Asian American Arts Centre, Asian Art Archive in America and The Los Angeles Contemporary Archive. Brooks is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Angie Jennings is an interdisciplinary artist who often investigates the poetics of identity. Formations of new mythologies linked to agency are evident in her work. She frequently explores relationships seated between abstraction, otherness and Earth. Her works have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Alexander Berggruen, Lehman College, Wagnall Museum of Contemporary Art, Coaxial Art Foundation, Human Resources, Abode Gallery, Franconia Sculpture Park, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, among others. Jennings received her MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego, and a BS in Art Education from South Dakota State University. Currently, she’s a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Diversity Fellow at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Diana Sofia Lozano (b. Cali, Colombia), is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work uses the language of botanical hybrids; the naturally occurring, genetically modified, and the imagined. Lozano presents biomimicry as metaphors for identity construction at the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race. Lozano's work focuses on the deconstruction of botanical taxonomic failures in order to reveal and redefine the boundaries of colonial identificatory practices and geopolitical borders. Lozano has exhibited at Company Gallery, Wave Hill Gardens, Deli Gallery and Rachel Uffner Gallery in NYC, Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco, New Image Art in Los Angeles, Casa Prado in Barranquilla Colombia, Orebro Konsthall in Orebro Sweden, Capsule Gallery in Shanghai China, among others. Lozano graduated from Yale University with an MFA in Sculpture.