Biography

Jenny Petite (born 1975, Washington State, USA) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Nashville, Tennessee. Working across photographic media, oil on canvas, and wood, she is best known for her postmodernist and poststructuralist approach to visual narrative. Through her artistic practice, Petite explores how signifiers precede and construct both reality and memory, reconfiguring temporal frames to interrogate the tension between originality and perception. Her oeuvre, often rooted in self-portraiture, presents an intellectual inquiry into the fluidity of identity, representation, and visual history.

Petite’s work is characterized by a sophisticated interplay between light, form, and self-representation. In her photographic and painted compositions, she dematerializes the presence of light, thereby dissolving the boundaries between the camera’s focus, her own image, and the surrounding subjects. This visual ambiguity emphasizes the relational dynamics between the artist and her environment, allowing familiar recurring characters to serve as symbolic anchors of introspection and continuity. Notable among her projects are Venus of Suburbia, Paris Nuit, Modern Renaissance – A Revival of Self, and Van Gogh Recreations—series that collectively reflect her commitment to deconstructing the authenticity of memory and recontextualizing art historical references within contemporary discourse.

Jenny Petite has exhibited widely across the United States, with notable presentations at the Nashville International Airport; Solo Exhibition at Main St Gallery, Nashville (2023); Maximalist at CEV Art Gallery, Arizona (2025); and Frida Inspired Exhibit at the Mount Dora Center of Arts, Florida. Her works are held in private collections internationally, attesting to the resonance of her conceptual and aesthetic inquiry. Through her ongoing projects, Petite continues to examine the mutable relationship between perception, memory, and the evolving self within the continuum of art history.