Jenie Gao's work can be described as a modern-day Aesop, combining familiar images in ways that flip old narratives and reshape the way we see ourselves and the communities and people that have shaped us.
The Globe Weaver is a collection of Jenie’s recent allegories. Each image is like a scene from a story, of animals both urban and rural, both domestic and wild, and anywhere in the transition in between. Some thrive. Some struggle to survive. Some assimilate, evolving to be useful by the terms of society. Others stay wild and unfettered in an increasingly measured and gridded environment. Some fight to make a life again after past threats of displacement, disease, and genocide. Some disappear. Still others enjoy impressive and precarious success, challenging the stigmas they can’t ever seem to shake.
