New Mexico artist Stefan Jennings Batista explores intersections of place, identity, and belonging in his photography practice. His latest series focuses on the mysteries of life, death, nature, and humanity.
Stefan Jennings Batista is a visual artist and educator. His mainly photographic practice broadly explores intersections of place, identity, and belonging often with an emphasis on visualizing the mysterious and uncanny within the everyday.
“These photographic excerpts from my series Tiny Ocean are fragments, reconstructed observations, and personal visions exploring the mysteries of life, death, nature, and humanity. The imagery implements subtle symbols from 19th-century scientific exploration, spiritual symbolism, and space-age subliminal vistas in order to probe the voids between the empirical and the divine, temporary and infinite. Desiccated cactus specimens appear as human lungs; hands contain star fields and ancient fossils that made our air long ago. Murky pools reflect light within vast primordial landscapes, eliciting visions of early life taking its first breath.
Tiny Ocean is a visual sci-fi meditation on the mysteries of what life is, where it could come from, and what connects us all. We are all star stuff, we all breathe the same air, we are all fragile.”
Batista is faculty of photography and two-dimensional art at Central New Mexico Community College and has received degrees in art from the University of New Mexico and the Ringling College of Art and Design. His work has been featured in exhibitions, publications, and projects across the United States and abroad.
Albuquerque, NM | stefanjenningsbatista.com | @stefanjenningsbatista
