About:
My practice looks at home, though home is never just one thing. It is a word stretched thin by longing, a memory lit by the flicker of something almost familiar. It hides in the creases of a tablecloth, the smell of burnt wax, or the strange comfort of a drawer that doesn’t quite shut. For those who have been displaced, uprooted, or confined, home takes on a peculiar shimmer: a thing that is there and not there, a lighthouse and a ghost.
I collect pieces of this shimmer. Like a scavenger or a caddisfly, I gather what the world leaves behind—scraps of paper mapped with fleeting thoughts, fragments of peeling walls, small treasures found on walks, objects abandoned to quiet corners. These remnants come together as drawings, objects, and stories, layered with sounds that hum with echoes of other rooms, other times.
The work hovers somewhere between belonging and not belonging, pulling at the threads of home’s fragility. It maps the dissonance between the pure, golden image of childhood homecomings and the jagged edges of adult reality. I explore how we make meaning from the objects and spaces that surround us, offering a meditation on the ways home continues to shape and reshape who we are. It’s about what happens when the floorboards crack, when the walls we thought were solid dissolve into dust and memory. The pieces seek to reconcile contradictions, merging personal experiences, collective histories, and emotional landscapes to reflect on belonging, loss, and the yearning for stability.
In these fragments, I try to stitch together something whole; an installation, a moment, a gesture. Something that feels, even for a fleeting second, like home, or at least the shadow it casts when the light is just right.
Jessica Ostrowicz (Birmingham, UK), is an artist and prison teacher.
Education:
- MA in Contemporary Art Practice- Critical Practice, Royal College of Art, London
- Fine Art Diplom with specialism in painting and drawing, Academy of Fine Art, Dresden, Germany
Current / Upcoming
2026
‘MISHPOCHA – The Art of Collaboration’, Jewish Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (group)
2025
‘Soil and Water’, Nirox Foundation, Krugersdorp, South Africa (group)
‘Common Threads’, for Bienalsur, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oaxaca, Mexico (group)
Artist in Residence, at HMP Spring Hill, with Ikon Gallery and the Rothschild Foundation
CV
Biennials:
2025:
‘Hilo Común’, for Bienalsur, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oaxaca, Mexico
Solo Exhibitions:
2025:
-‘Remaining Without Returning’, Op Enheim, Wrocław, Poland
-‘The Inhale Before’, Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin
2024:
'I Wish I Was (Homeward Bound)’, Nogallery, Berlin
2022:
'Pack Up The Moon’, The Steamship PS, London
2019:
'Pale Fire’, Galerie Plan D, Dusseldorf, Germany
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2025:
-‘Waiting ’til Next Year For Another Year’, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
-‘Soil & Water’, Nirox Foundation, Krugersdorp, South Africa
-‘Common Threads’, Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin
2024:
-Deconstruction Construction (curator), HMP Bullingdon, Oxfordshire
-‘Searching for Traces Towards the Present’ – projects and interventions against antisemitism, Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin
2023:
‘Contains 10’, East Quay Gallery, Watchet
2021:
-‘Deptford X’, London
-‘A Rose (is a Rose)', Kajiado Rescue Centre, Berlin
2020:
-‘Family Business’, Centrum Judaicum, New Synagogue, Berlin
-‘Butterfly Blue Goodbye’, Brixton Beneficiary, London
2018:
MA Degree Show, Royal College of Art, London
2017:
‘The Dodo and the Seed’, Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, London
2016:
-‘Graduate Show’, Oktogon Museum, Dresden
-‘Intervention’, Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin
-‘Hat Stick Shoe’, Associacao Cultural, Gois, Portugal
2014:
-‘Postcards From The East’, APT Gallery, London
-‘Dada Ty’, European Centre of Culture, Hellerau, Germany
Residencies:
2025:
- ‘Hilo Común’, in Puebla, Hueyapan and Oaxaca, Mexico
- Common Threads for ’10 Years, Ten Days’, Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin
- Artist in Residence, with Ikon Gallery Birmingham, in collaboration with HMP Spring Hill, funded by Rothschild Foundation
2024:
Cordts Foundation residency, Schwanenwerder, Berlin
2016:
Raizvanguarda, Gois, Portugal
Collections:
- Tamachij Chihuatl Collective at Museum of Contemporary Art (MACCO), Oaxaca, Mexico
- Galerie Diehl, Berlin, Germany