Jessica Bardsley is an artist and scholar currently based in New York. Her multifaceted practice spans across research, writing, sculpture, drawing, and video. Her work has been supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies. She is the recipient of various awards, including a Princess Grace Award, Grand Prize at 25FPS, the Eileen Maitland Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Best Short Film at Punto de Vista, and numerous Harvard Film Study Center fellowships. Bardsley has been an artist-in-residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and Ox Bow School of Art. Her first feature film, The Cave Without a Name, was a finalist for the 2023 Venice Biennale's Cinema College.
In the following essay series, we'll look at Bardsley's fictional take on autobiography in her works The Blazing World (2013), Goodbye Thelma (2018), and Life Without Dreams (2021).