Jessica Mein was born in São Paulo and lives and works in Buenos Aires. She received her MFA from Hunter College, New York and BA from Duke University. Solo exhibitions include The Pavilion Downtown, Dubai, Simon Preston, New York and Galeria Leme, São Paulo. She also exhibited as part of The Street Files – Biennial El Museo del Barrio, New York; The Julia Stoschek Foundation, Dusseldorf; The Drawing Center, New York; Wellin Museum, Hamilton College, New York; Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico; Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai; Carbon 12 Gallery, Dubai; New York University, Abu Dhabi and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, among others. Her work is included in collections of The Bronx Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf and The Albright Knox, Buffalo, and Museu de Arte Contemporânea in São Paulo. Mein participated as an artist-in-residence of Art Dubai in 2015, partnered with the Delfina Art Foundation, and was awarded an Alserkal Avenue artist commission project in 2016. In 2022 she participated in the New Roots Foundation artist residency in Antigua, Guatemala.
Over the last twenty years, Mein has developed her research around the physicality of images, supports and the limits of language. In her work, the line is a fundamental element with which the artist engages in its most diverse forms and materials. First as a trace, contour, and rifts in her drawings and video animations, and then as materiality in the unraveling of the weaves on cotton canvases, hemp bags, looms, and lace. Through the line, the artist explores contradictions and porosities between support and artwork, intellectual and manual labour, finished and unfinished, artist and artisan.