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Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image transfer on cinderblock;
46 x 62.5 in;
2025
My practice is rooted in documentary traditions of the South and draws upon my background in media studies. I explore the possibilities of worldbuilding and technology as vessels for research, placemaking, and personal identity. I then embody these identities/places/ideas using photo, video, sculpture, installation, and performance.
In my most recent work I have been exploring themes of permanence, radical imagination, and the question of what could be. I use photography, video, and field recordings to document sites of rapid change and intense transition. I am particularly drawn to overlooked ephemera of construction like trash, unused materials, and abandoned projects and machinery. Construction sites become liminal, serving as a metaphor for portals that reach beyond their physical boundaries to reveal parallel narratives or histories of land and the people who live on it. Through my documentation I hope to reframe ideas surrounding “development”, or what is considered progress, and capture places in a state of transformation before they are entirely seized by forces of capitalism. I often pose the intensely physical state of construction with images, recordings, and sounds associated with digital activity and the Internet. By contrasting these subjects I can illustrate that our physical reality is just as constructed and malleable as the one in our phones and computers. I see this as an act of reclamation through the imagination granting infinite possibility for what things might become.
Website: https://joncopes.com/
IG: @joncopes
Image transfer on cinderblock;
46 x 62.5 in;
2025
My practice is rooted in documentary traditions of the South and draws upon my background in media studies. I explore the possibilities of worldbuilding and technology as vessels for research, placemaking, and personal identity. I then embody these identities/places/ideas using photo, video, sculpture, installation, and performance.
In my most recent work I have been exploring themes of permanence, radical imagination, and the question of what could be. I use photography, video, and field recordings to document sites of rapid change and intense transition. I am particularly drawn to overlooked ephemera of construction like trash, unused materials, and abandoned projects and machinery. Construction sites become liminal, serving as a metaphor for portals that reach beyond their physical boundaries to reveal parallel narratives or histories of land and the people who live on it. Through my documentation I hope to reframe ideas surrounding “development”, or what is considered progress, and capture places in a state of transformation before they are entirely seized by forces of capitalism. I often pose the intensely physical state of construction with images, recordings, and sounds associated with digital activity and the Internet. By contrasting these subjects I can illustrate that our physical reality is just as constructed and malleable as the one in our phones and computers. I see this as an act of reclamation through the imagination granting infinite possibility for what things might become.
Website: https://joncopes.com/
IG: @joncopes
