Andrea Jenkins: Building Social Change Through a Mashup of Words and Art

Can We Talk for REAL

Wednesday March 30, 2016 playwright, curator, visual artist, poet, writer, spoken word artist, performer, and trans activist Andrea Jenkins.Jenkin's work is concerned with the interplay of words, mediums and genres that can be mashed together to create a new narrative. She views her work as collage, working primarily with paper and mixed media as a visual form of curation. Taking various images that have been artfully produced for the purpose of consumerism and mixing them with social justice messages and images brings attention to the issues of inequality. Andrea calls South Minneapolis home. She was awarded the Bush Fellowship in recognition of her extraordinary achievement and potential. In addition to the Many Voices and Bush Leadership Fellowships, she was awarded Naked Stages and Verve Grants in 2010. In 2002 she received the Loft Mentor Series Award for Poetry. Since 2006 she has co-curated the Queer Voices series at Intermedia Arts, which is the longest running GLBT reading series in the country. Her work has been published in several newspapers, journals, and anthologies. She holds a B.A. in Human Services, a M.S. in Community Economic Development, and a MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University. When she’s not lending her skills to almost every area of the Twin Cities art scene, she is the Minneapolis 8th Ward Senior Policy Aid in the office of Councilwoman Elizabeth Glidden.