Artist Statement
Jendayi Omowale is a Caribbean-American journalist and filmmaker interested in examining the intersections of popular culture and power structures. Just like a dog with a bone, she is relentlessly chipping away at the “why?” behind social phenomena — it leads her to some interesting places.
Following thinkers like Saidiya Hartman, her work centers around the need for critical fabulation when combating cultural erasure and entrenched inequality within the existing historical archive.
She graduated from the University of Cambridge with her MPhil in World History and was named a CDH Associate for her work in digitization and online archival methods as decolonial praxis in cultural heritage. She received her Bachelor’s in Journalism and Dramatic Literature with a minor in History, and was chosen to be Class Representative for NYU’s Class of 2021 graduation. She has been nominated twice for Hearst Awards by the NYU Journalism department, once for her photo essay of the university’s profile, another for her multimedia documentary focusing on gentrification’s effects on the hair industry. Along with being a photographer and filmmaker, Jendayi has worked for over four years as a journalist, including writing for the likes of Teen Vogue and them. Currently, she runs an award-winning documentary series about Black artists and art history in New York called BlackArrogance! which was chosen for the
2024 Snarky Incubator Cohort, awarded an NYU Diversity Reporting Grant, IMDb-qualifying Onyko Films Award, Best Documentary at 2021 NYC Webfest and officially selected for the Berlin Lift-off Film Festival and Miami Webfest.