Jay Lynn Gomez

Jay Lynn Gomez’s work has evolved from a commitment... [to depicting] the struggles of the working class. In collaged, painted, and installation works, often created on humble materials such as found cardboard boxes, Gomez explores the hidden labor involved in maintaining the manicured lawns and glittering facades of California’s upper middle-class and wealthy suburban neighborhoods.

Born in the Inland Empire, Gomez left art school to become employed as a live-in nanny. Finding herself in between the privileged realm of art, and encumbered by practical concerns, Gomez understood the power brewed in the unspoken. Just as with her formerly undocumented parents who worked as janitors and graveyard shift truck drivers, Gomez realized a strong, albeit implicit, demand to be on the sidelines, unseen, and avoid interaction with his employers while working as a caretaker. Her artistic practice astutely responds to the marginalization, by insistently making workers visible, describing the unspoken, and imagining the unrepresented.

Gomez’s moving critique gently bears witness to commonplace social and economic injustices, implicating those who benefit from these buried exploits, and urging restorative change.

-Denise Johnson, "My Barrio" Exhibition Catalogue