Artist Statement
Jendayi is a Caribbean-American filmmaker and writer focused on telling the narratives of those marginalized. Their work meditates on the experience of the personal as political and the political as personal. For them, vulnerability is both the beginning and ending to all things.
Starting their professional career writing for an independent art magazine, Jendayi’s storytelling has transcended the medium of writing, employing anything from podcasts to photography to film to weave a captivating narrative. Their work wants to examine the bigger social problems often through a reinterpretation of the existing historical archive.
They graduated magna cum laude with a 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 Apartment Therapy, Condé Nast, and being an editor over at The Interlude Magazine. Currently, they run an award-winning documentary series about Black artists and art history in New York called BlackArrogance! which was 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.
Jendayi’s Artist Interview
