Jason Ferguson

2018 - 2019 Visiting Artist and Scholar

Jason Ferguson uses humor, the uncanny, and an absurdist voice to create public interventions, performance, video, and sculptural objects. Ferguson’s psychologically charged installations have been said to raise issues of artistic control, consciousness, and mortality. In his work private space becomes public, the ethereal becomes tangible, and the obvious becomes obscure.

Over the last 15 years Ferguson has developed a diverse and inquisitive body of work. Recurring themes in his studio include monotonous and repetitive action, misusing scientific protocol, corporeality versus the unknown, and the ability to recontextualize the familiar to generate uncanny experiences. His portfolio has been divided into four categories (i.e. Spectacle, Strata, The Body, and Ritual) that highlight the different yet inherently connected branches of his work.

Ferguson was born in a suburb of Washington, DC and raised in the small town of Poolesville, Maryland. He moved to Baltimore to study art at Towson University and continued his studies at the University of Delaware where he received his MFA. Ferguson has exhibited his work internationally including exhibitions in Berlin, Germany; Kolderveen, the Netherlands; Vitória, Brazil; Brooklyn, NY; Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA; Baltimore, MD; Kansas City, MO; Alexandria, VA; and he recently filled two rooms at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit. He was an Artist in Residence at Elsewhere Artist Collaborative in 2007 and Kunst in Kolderveen in 2008. Ferguson speaks widely about his work through public lectures and events. His artwork has been featured in publications including the 3D Additivist Cookbook, SCULPTURE magazine, Knight Arts, Artifizz, the Chicago Art Review, and many more. Jason currently resides in Michigan where he is an Associate Professor in the School of Art & Design at Eastern Michigan University.