For her debut solo museum exhibition, Jana Marie Cariddi (SCAD B.F.A., painting, 2015) presents two new bodies of work, including her signature amorphous constructions alongside a suite of black-and-white graphite drawings. Titled after the brain’s processing center for memory and emotion, Amygdala features sculptural paintings whose uncanny forms stir the instinctual urge to decode their designs through one’s own lived experiences, eliciting feelings of familiarity, curiosity, or even disgust. These surreal works, originating from intuitive sketches and meticulous planning, animate the artist’s obsession with childhood artifacts, pop culture relics, and early digital interfaces, spanning Windows screensavers, Betty Spaghetti toys, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Cut from CNC-milled wood and embellished with airbrushed patterns, resin, and marbles, the compositions pulsate with color and texture while mediating tensions between the organic and synthetic, the playful and macabre. Cariddi’s drawings similarly depict abstract ecosystems guided by a personal pseudo-science that favors feeling over logic, coalescing into an alphabet of idiosyncratic petroglyphs. Balancing visually and conceptually opposing forces, Cariddi’s works reflect on the unruly, discordant harmonies undergirding our bodies, sensibilities, and surroundings.
Jana Marie Cariddi (b. 1993, N.J.) earned her B.F.A. in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2015 and her M.F.A. in painting and drawing from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2024. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at venues in Los Angeles, Berlin, New Orleans, and Savannah, Ga., among others. Cariddi has participated in residencies including GlogauAIR in Berlin; Artist in ASO in Kumamoto, Japan; On::View at ARTS Southeast in Savannah; and the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency at Collar Works in New York. Cariddi lives and works in Jackson, Miss., where she is a Windgate Fellow and professor of painting at Millsaps College.
Amygdala is organized by SCAD Museum of Art assistant curator Haley Clouser.
