Jack Hogan

they/them

b. 1986

Waterford, Ireland

Jack Hogan’s work focuses on the rich sociality of everyday life, foregrounding friendship and what constitutes good shared lives and places. Life can be hard and seem meaningless. For Hogan, art offers a way to create meaning or to find beauty in meaninglessness. Their artistic investigations are diverse in subject matter and medium, driven by intensive study, yet always deeply personal and subjective in their final form.

A visit to the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico in 2017, along with reading their writings, marked an essential shift in Hogan’s artistic development. The Zapatistas’ refusal to separate mind and body, a division at the core of much of Western intellectual life, was a revelation for them. Equally influential was the Zapatistas’ refusal to define themselves too narrowly or to draw firm borders around their struggle. Subcomandante Marcos writes: “And, so that they would understand what we wanted, we began to create in our own lands what we wanted. ... Our own laws let books, medicine, laughter, sweets, and toys flourish.”

Hogan is interested in processes of social construction and the codes that shape them. They aim to tell stories that are not about heroes with shining weapons, but about companionship and the dispossessed viewer who needs a moment of respite, play, and fortitude.