Jiesha Stephens

is a creator, cat mom, and fourth-year English Ph.D. student at University of Oregon with interdisciplinary passion in both art and literature. Her specialization is U.S. Black Literature and Culture drawing from methods that include Black Visual Culture, Black Feminisms, and Women of Color Feminisms. Her work reflects her mixed media training and lived experience as a first-generation Afro-Latina navigating white spaces. Themes of longing and displacement surface in the texture of her art. All the following pieces are a fusion of her upbringing and expression of the current political climate.
F*** Your Rules
F*** Your Rules
These works center her identity as an Afro-Latinx woman rediscovering her relationship to her body and mind. The colors and texture of Jiesha’s work reflect her process of disentanglement with pseudo-ideology and otherness she felt in a small southern community that upheld anti-black, homophobic, ableist, and sexist notions of being. Jiesha has a deep interest in working through the shame, violence, and oppression black girls experience in their childhood.
Expression
Expression
Shattering
Shattering
Featured Poem: Check out "when i was growing up" by Janna Datahan, a poem accompanying Jiesha's piece Shattering.
Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

- Toni Morrison, Beloved
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

- Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I am deliberate
and afraid
of nothing.

- Audre Lorde, "New Year's Day"

Jiesha's Process

Her medium is digital art, mix media, acrylic, and ceramics. Her work plays with texture, organic materials, and the body as a way to honor the small black girl who lost her voice. Be free.

Contact Jiesha

You can find selected work from Jiesha's collection for sale here. If you see a print you like on her Instagram, you can directly message her at jieshas01@gmail.com or on her Instagram, and she will make the print available on her Redbubble platform.