Project Space Resident

Jenna Caravello

August 22 – September 20, 2026

Open Studio and Pop-up Arcade: Friday September 18, 6-9pm

Artist’s Statement

I work with animation and video game development software to explore the intersection of computer culture and analog mundanity and tell deeply personal stories. My interactive sculptural installations, experimental video games, animated films, and mixed-reality musical performances reflect on impermanence, the identity politics of digital avatars, social relationships across online forums, and the role of memory in singular and collective narratives. The conventions I work with are rooted in video game mechanics and a kind of temporal logic that is unique to animation. I am interested in the entertainment industries my practice intersects with, and use my practice to reflect on marginalized topics in tech and game spheres, like longing, absurdity, love, monotony, and aging.

Bio

Jenna Caravello is a Los Angeles based artist, working across animation, performance, installation, and computer games. Her practice embraces the real, the virtual, and the cartoonish through storytelling, ludic structures, and computational systems. Her animated films, interactive projects, and performances explore physical and digital impermanence, the identity politics of digital avatars, and social relationships across online forums.

Jenna’s animation, game, and installation works have been featured at venues internationally, including at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the National Taiwan Arts Education Center, REDCAT, Raindance Film Festival, the GIRAF International Animation Festival, and Slamdance. She is a 2026 MacDowell Fellow and received a Princess Grace Award in 2018. Jenna teaches at UCLA in the department of Design Media Arts and serves as Associate Director of the UCLA Game Lab. She received a BFA in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation from SAIC, and an MFA from CalArts in Experimental Animation.

VSW Project Space Residencies are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the New York State Legislature, Monroe County, and Joy of Giving Something.