Art
Jasa McKenzie makes art that’s all about feelings—big, messy, complicated ones—and how we process them. Inspired by the emo aesthetics of early 2000s alternative rock culture, her work dives into nostalgia, identity, and the awkward-but-beautiful chaos of figuring yourself out. She uses a moody, limited color palette that screams emo but layers it with shiny, colorful, and celebratory materials, creating a contrast that says, Yeah, life sucks sometimes, but it’s worth celebrating anyway.
Text is a huge part of her process—disjointed, tongue-in-cheek song lyrics that feel like fragments of an unfinished diary entry or a potential hit emo track. These phrases are raw, emotional, and sometimes bleak, but they’re grounded in textiles and craft materials that add warmth and tactility. Think embroidery, sequins, and other “women’s work” that flips the script on the heavily male-dominated emo scene of the 2000s. She’s all about mixing the deeply personal and vulnerable with the flashy and celebratory, reclaiming a space in a genre that didn’t always feel welcoming to everyone.
Her work also has a strong queer lens. It reflects the search for identity and authenticity that so many queer people go through, especially when trying to reconcile who they are with where they belong. The shiny, craft-heavy approach is a way of anchoring those immaterial, hard-to-define emotions into something tangible, something you can literally hold. It’s about making those raw, often unspoken feelings real and visible, while also poking fun at and celebrating them.
Ultimately, McKenzie is here for the heartbreaks, the failures, and the moments of clarity that make up the human (and queer) experience. Her art is a love letter to anyone who’s ever cried in their room to a song that understood them better than they understood themselves.