Jamie Denburg Habie

Statement

My work seeks to reveal unexpected relationships between multiple bodies (human, animal, earth and celestial) as a means to challenge dualistic perceptions of reality and propose tools for healing. I do this primarily by creating paintings that serve as scores for movement, sound and meditation, or that reveal shared materialities between beings. The paintings are informed by living in postwar Guatemala, where violence against bodies and the exploitation of the earth and its resources are interrelated, and developed through research into materials, somatic practices, meditation, and the neuroscience of consciousness. The resulting artworks seek to make the interconnectedness between all things more visible, often by offering a set of instructions that create the conditions to experience nonduality, or the dissolution of the mind/body & subject/object binary created by western thinking and advanced by late-stage capitalism.

Some works, for example, contain minerals and elements found across bodies and soil, such as copper and calcium, highlighting shared materialities. Others shed light on the interconnectivity of somatic experience and spatio-temporality, such as a series of paintings that serve as scores for blinking, which, when done rapidly, alters the perception of time through the modulation of the body’s dopamine torrents. Another series explores the relationship between the passing of time and the volcanoes of my hometown, where their altitude makes time pass ever so slightly faster than at sea level according to the law of relativity. Seen this way, time is not an independent force acting on us, but a subjective process shaped as much by space as the electrical and chemical pathways in our bodies.

Other works explore the relationship between language and the body through evolutionary neurobiology. The neurons that code for language evolved from older cells in charge of processing the sensations of being a body in space, resulting in the brain registering sequences of words much like it would physical movements. Seen this way, language is truly incarnate, and the brain/body divide that is the basis of western thinking is not only illusory, but potentially dangerous: separating your mind from your body, I believe, is the first act of violence towards the self, which later permits you to act violently towards others and the world. To make visible the implausibility of separation, I often paint serpents, beings that are linear and curvilinear at once (like language) and whose bodies appear to be their heads and vice versa: where does the head end and the body begin?

Lastly, the desire to spark altered states of perception through art is guided by the belief that all things are conscious. My ultimate hope is that revealing a shared language across beings and materials can be honed as a technology of the mind and harnessed as a tool for healing the separatist thinking that threatens to push us towards extinction.

GlogauAIR Project

My work is motivated by the belief that all things are conscious, and that dualism—the idea that mind and body are distinct, and that bodies are separate from the world—is illusory and causes conflict and violence. Experiences of non duality, in turn, offer healing and harmony. In the hopes of catalyzing feelings of interconnectedness, I create interactive paintings that serve as scores for sound, meditation and movement as a means to dissolve the hard boundaries of self. The paintings are informed by the fields of neuroscience, meditation and somatic practices, each of which offers distinct tools to experience non duality, thereby making visible the indivisibility of bodies, minds, materiality and earth.

Already having researched the neuroscience of language and movement in prior work, at GlogauAIR I will focus on the neuroscience of breath, and its potential to create altered states of perception. Often, breathwork is treated as a practice that involves mostly the body and awareness of it. However, because the brain devotes almost 50% of its energy to visual processing, I am curious about developing a seeing-breathing practice: capitalizing on the visual systems’ privileged neuronal status, can images and breathing techniques be meshed to activate more unified experiences of reality?

CV Summary

Selected individual Exhibitions

• 2022 Carne, Cobre / Cuerpo, Come, Galería Extra, Guatemala City
• 2021 Furtivo Subjetivo, (with Sebastian Schloesser), Solemne Centro, Guatemala City
• Cuerpo exquisito (with Sebastian Schloesser), Galería Panza Verde, Antigua, Guatemala
• 2020 How to Peel an Orange, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California
• 2015 Global Landscapes Forum (World Resources Institute) COP 21, Paris, France

Selected Group Exhibitions

• 2024 Casa, Aristolochia, Antigua, Guatemala
• 2022 Cartografía de lo invisible, Galería Extra, Guatemala City
• PLURAL, Espacio Libélula, Antigua, Guatemala
• Work, Venice Beach, California
• Juannio, Guatemala City
• Dualidad, Santo Spirito, Antigua, Guatemala
• 2021 Works Acquired in the Yuki Nii Foundation’s Permanent Collection, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, New York City
• Los tormentos de la materia, Galería Extra, Guatemala City
• PLURAL, Espacio Libélula, Antigua, Guatemala
• 2020 Works Created During Lockdown, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, New York City
• Forever 21, Other Places Art Fair, San Pedro, California
• Imagine Entertainment, Beverly Hills, California
• 2019 MFA Group Show, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California
• 2018 Happenings at Biscuit, Biscuit Lofts, Los Angeles, California
• Dream, Arc Galleries, San Francisco, California
• 200 Rings, 20 Creators, Galerie Goutte de Terre, Paris, France
• 2017 Juannio, Guatemala City
• Group exhibition, El Sitio, Antigua, Guatemala
• 2016 RGB, PH21 Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
• 2015 ALL YOU CAN BE: Explorations of the Self and its Mutations, Gallatin Galleries, New York City
• 2014 Gallatin Arts Festival, Gallatin Galleries, New York City
• 2013 Superreal: Alternate Realities in Film and Photography, Museo del Barrio, New York City
• Juannio, Guatemala City
• Cinco Días, Centro Cultural de España, Guatemala City
• Gallatin Arts Festival, Gallatin Galleries, New York City
• 2012 Brucennial, New York City
• Gallatin Arts Festival, New York City
• 2011 Group exhibition, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles

Residencies

• 2022 MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts
• 2022 Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn, New York City

Professional experience

• 2013 Cofounded La Nueva Fábrica, Guatemala’s longest-standing funded non-profit contemporary art space and residency program. Served as Director from 2013-2017 & 2020-2024.

Education

• 2010-2014 Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. BA. Individualized major in art and politics, focusing on the role of art in conflictive cultures, and the effects of violence on art-making. Summa Cum Laude. Leo Bronstein Homage Award for excellence in the arts.

Gallery