Jen Urso
STATE OF EXCEPTION FLOW CHART
2017-2019
Pencil on paper
40 x 50 inches
Courtesy the artist

Jen Urso is a Phoenix-based artist whose work closely responds to the concerns of her day-to-day life. She describes the genesis of this drawing as a feeling of personal despair: “After feeling despair over numerous tragic events (shootings, bombings, politics) I tried making sense of it by creating a map that looked at all the small steps that took us to where we are. I started with 9/11, as the point of fear, mourning and state intervention where we entered what philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls the State of Exception.” Much of her practice reflects this need to make sense of an emotion, whether that be grief over the passing of her sister (Remarkable Presence, 2021; Measuring the Coastline, 2022), or alarm about excessive water use in the urban region around her desert home (What Grows Here, 2022). (DKS)

evolving drawing

After feeling despair over numerous tragic events (shootings, bombings, politics) I tried making sense of it by creating a map that looked at all the small steps that took us to where we are. I started with 9/11, as the point of fear, mourning and state intervention where we entered what philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls the State of Exception.

Our current situation never starts—it is always moving, but there are points where opportunity is taken advantage of, for better or worse. Like every map, it always needs to be redrawn because nothing stays the same. Even the things we see that appear to be static like a rock or a building are slightly different every time we look at them. Even if we never look away, we’ll always notice some different detail. The one thing to keep you from despair is that, if nothing else, the current situation (whether good or bad) can’t last.