Artist-in-Residence: Jen Datu

Cool Change is pleased to announce Jen Datu as the first artist-in-residence in our inaugural 2023 Residency Program. Working between our new King’s Complex location and UWA’s School of Design, they will be in residence for two months, from 28 August to 22 October.

Using their Muay Thai training as a point of departure for their project, Jen will explore how the religious–meditative practice of martial arts can create a shift from the physical to the metaphysical through intimacy and self-reflection, grounded in the sweaty and fleshy body.

Having recently been drawn to the versatile language of textile arts, they utilise the repetitive and cathartic nature of such processes for the purposes of learning and intuitive self-healing. In the act of weaving, they have found a rhythm reminiscent of the movement of sparring.

Through a mix of textiles and video, Jen will investigate the form and history of the scroll tapestry, evoking images of historical narratives and prayer objects to work through ideas concerning care and violence as a way of approaching spirituality through a queer lens.

Jen Datu is a queer Filipinx artist whose interdisciplinary practice draws on personal experiences and everyday observations to examine the various power structures in which they find themselves implicated and to help work through their associated hidden traumas.

Living and working on unceded Whadjuk Noongar Country, Jen graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2019, has since been involved in exhibitions at Cool Change, Pig Melon, and The Substation (Singapore), and has undertaken residencies at Nod and Curtin University.