Jessie Kanji

Saturday 5th July

Jessie Kanji is a multi-disciplinary artist, researcher and educator based in Aotearoa. Following the migration of her grandparents from Gujarat, India, in the 1940s, she grew up in Wellington.

She specialised in print, graduating with a Postgraduate Diploma of Fine Arts with distinction from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2023. In her practice-led research, she has worked across the related fields of bookmaking, drawing, photography, paper-making, textiles, and ceramics.

In 2023, she was the recipient of the Printopia Print Prize and the National Youth Art Award from the Waikato Society of the Arts and a finalist in the New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Awards in 2024. Informed by her background in medical science, her art searches for the balance between order and chaos. Patterns in her inner world form the lens by which she sees the world. Kanji primarily uses print as a method of thinking to access cultural exchange, memory and meaning. In the amber-like qualities of ink, her work seeks to evoke the concept of rasa - a state of total absorption and emotional resonance.

Jessie has recently received an offer to attend Rhode Island School of Design to study her Master of Fine Arts, she has received a partial scholarship and is currently fundraising to attend RISD in fall 2025.