Jessica Elena Aquino (she/they) is a fiber interdisciplinary artist, educator, and poet from Santa Ana, CA currently based in Brooklyn. Aquino uses improvisational weaving, sculpture, and the use of childhood & cultural objects to navigate her (dis)connection to familismo, home, love, land, and labor. Aquino intertwines poetry, plant dyeing, and biographical & historical research, to provide a space of healing. She sits in discomfort in unweaving forms of heartache, intergenerational trauma and finding catharsis by working with the earth itself.

Jessica Elena Aquino (b.1991) earned her B.A in Studio Art in Painting from Colgate University in 2014 and an MFA at the PA Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019. Her work has been exhibited at the Barrett Arts Center in Poughkeepsie, NY; Da Vinci Art Alliance; Philadelphia; PA, The PA Academy of the Fine Arts; and Anna Zorina Gallery. Aquino has been invited to participate in Manufactured Narratives at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, MI in January 2022. She was an Artist in Residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn NY, Chautauqua School of Art and upcoming residency at the Oak Soring Garden Foundation in VA. Aquino has won numerous awards such as the Alumni Council Award, Murray Dessner Travel Grant. Aquino has a background in horticulture and education working for the PA Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Museum of Modern Art, in Manhattan, NY.