Jody Zellen presented Other Places, a site-specific installation of digital photo collages mounted throughout the Museum’s galleries and non-exhibition locations forming a dialogue with the architecture. The imagery used fragments of urban settings in various stages of growth and decay. Taken from mass media sources, these photographs comment on the transformation of urban spaces. Each panel contained a single word like, build, hurry, alien, which are meant as a further commentary on urban life.

Her work juxtaposed images of old and new cities reflecting a sense of nostalgia for the past, contrasted with wonder about the future. Through a bombardment of disparate images, her pieces celebrate the complexity and unpredictability of urban space. A walk through the city becomes a vehicle for a meditation on space, time, and human interaction. Zellen is interested in the patterns, structure and design of the urban environment. Rather than document the cities she sees, she employs media-generated representations of contemporary and historic cities as raw material for aesthetic and social explorations. Using these appropriated images and texts, she makes individual photo collages, multi-media installations, public artworks, artist books, and web art projects.

Jody Zellen lives in Los Angeles, California. She works in many media simultaneously making photographs, installations, net art, public art, as well as artists’ books that explore the subject of the urban environment. Her website “Ghost City“ began in 1997 and is an ever-changing, poetic meditation on the city. Since 1997, her webwork has been shown in numerous international festivals. She was a recipient of a 2003 COLA Fellowship and a 2002 Durfee ARC Grant. Solo exhibitions included Suzanne Veilmetter Los Angeles Projects and The Sesnon Gallery, University of California Santa Cruz.