Discipline: Visual Art – photography

Tenesh Webber

Discipline: Visual Art – photography
Region: Jersey City, NJ
MacDowell Fellowships: 2019, 2020

Tenesh Webber’s work occupies a space between drawing, sculpture, and photography in process, linear quality, and composition. In her black and white photograms, Webber explores technical manipulations and chance-based practice, deploying the grid as a starting point. Using thread, and found objects and forms, Webber creates sculptural objects in the studio. These objects are then manipulated, through extensive experimentation in the darkroom, to create unique, camera-less, photographic prints.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibits at Yossi Milo Gallery, and Margaret Thatcher Projects, in New York and Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA. She is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art, New York. Webber’s awards include an Art Matters Inc. Fellowship, two Canada Council Grants, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Visual Arts Award, and a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Photography Award and Fellowship, as well as two residencies; ESKFF at Mana Contemporary, and the Hermitage Artists Retreat. Her work is held in private and public collections including the Asian American Art Center, New York, and the Brooklyn Museum.

At MacDowell in 2019, Webber created a group of 30 black and white, abstract, photographic images. These photographs are an extension of the work Webber recently exhibited in a group show at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, Painting with Light. During her 2020 residency, Webber made six, medium-scale charcoal drawings. Prior drawings from this series were included in the group exhibition, “Passing Bittersweet: a tribute to Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights.”, at Lafayette College, in Easton, PA.

Studios

Nef

Tenesh Webber worked in the Nef studio.

Nef Studio, the first entirely new studio built after 1937, was donated by esteemed photographer, explorer, author, and MacDowell Fellow Evelyn Steffanson Nef in 1992. Endowed funds for the studio’s maintenance in perpetuity and an annual Fellowship for photographers were given in addition to funds for construction. Mrs. Nef said she had known about MacDowell all her…

Learn more