Clotilde Jiménez
HYPEBEAST

Shawn Ghassemitari, HYPEBEAST , February 15, 2022

Clotilde Jiménez exhibition, Un Nouveau Monde, featured in HYPEBEAST as one of the ten must-see exhibitions by prominent Black artists.  

 

Rather than simply creating for creation’s sake, Jiménez has said in a past  interview that his work was sparked out of an ultimatum. “I grew up in Philadelphia, in a low-income area, and the school in my area was really bad. My mom did some research and found this new school for architecture and design, and they had a program for at-risk youth. She said, ‘Look, this is your only way to not end up like everyone else. If you go [to the other school], you’ll get into trouble.’ And I applied.” 

 

Each element in Jiménez’s work is an exploration into identity. As a bisexual Black and Puerto-Rican man, he struggled to find images and iconography that he could relate to, so he sought to create his own visual lexicon.