WASHINGTON, DC.- Continuing its commitment to highlight the work of exceptional DC-based emerging artists, Transformer's 11th Annual DC Artist Solo Exhibition presents the work of Jessica Cebra in her first solo exhibition.

Jessica Cebra transforms the gallery space into a fantastical constructed cave, obsessively plastered with imagery drawn from the artist's personal museum souvenir postcard collection. Inside the cave, the legacy and stability of institutionalized narratives of art history are distorted and embellished to obscurity, covered in paper mosaic and collage – a fabricated shrine to impermanence. Fascinated by how history and collective memory are shaped by the ways we collect, preserve and present cultural artifacts, Cebra explores notions of impermanence, growth and decay by appropriating and manipulating imagery of man-made iconic idealizations, monumentality, and opulent materiality in the face of larger natural forces.

“I have been interested in memorials and reliquaries, things that preserve the remains of the past, or things that point to the past and insist on being remembered. How will the whole of human existence be memorialized?” ponders Cebra. Having studied Library Science, archives management and historic preservation, she understands that collecting, arranging, categorizing, preserving and exhibiting objects is as important as the significance of the artifacts themselves.

“Everyone has their own museum and archive in their mind, but how much of each of us will be remembered in the unpredictable future?” Envisioning caves as storehouses, safe-havens, and reclusive, introverted spaces, Cebra nods to artist Thomas Hirshhorn’s quote as a source of inspiration for her work: ‘I like to think of all the existing undiscovered caves. The real Lascaux cave remains undiscovered.’