Date: 7/7/26
Contact: Eva Gabriella Flynn;
Education and Outreach
Coordinator, NMSU Art Museum,
egflynn@nmsu.edu, 575-646-2185

Jennifer Ling Datchuk: RIPENING
Exhibition Dates:
September 19, 2025-March 7, 2026

English | Espanol

Las Cruces, NM- The University Art Museum is pleased to present Jennifer Ling Datchuk: RIPENING, a multidisciplinary exhibition that explores the cost of women’s labor in material culture through five thematic sections: Protest, Rest, Labor, Exploitation, and Ripening. Rooted in Datchuk’s personal history and layered identity as a Chinese American woman and “third culture kid”, each section of RIPENING reflects Datchuk’s practice as a trained ceramicist working across media—from hair to video—as she examines and questions the social, cultural, and political systems that continue to hold women back. Featuring new and reimagined installations created for NMSU Art Museum, RIPENING amplifies female voices, fosters collective care, and expands dialogue around Asian American histories and women’s labor in the Southwest through immersive works and public programming.

The exhibition title, RIPENING, refers both to the growth and development of fruits and vegetables for harvesting and to the physiological and mental changes a woman and child undergo simultaneously during pregnancy and throughout life. This exhibition comes at an important moment for Datchuk, as both a new mother who recently navigated the birthing complex and as an artist actively questioning the policing of women’s bodies in our current society and the value of their labor in the global economy. These concepts are deeply explored in her new works, including Under Construction, which features a bamboo scaffold that once encased the artist’s pregnant body during a durational performance. Suspended from the sculpture are porcelain clocks and pregnancy tests, representing time, expectation, and the intimate labor of growing a human during a heightened political climate. Two life-sized monitors loop GIFs of the artist rotating clockwise and counterclockwise during the original performance, mimicking the rhythm of a modern workday for most laborers across the globe. The full body of work on display in RIPENING emphasizes the often-invisible nature of women’s labor—both metaphorically and literally—and its intersection with autonomy, vulnerability, and resistance.

RIPENING will be activated through a series of free public programs, including an artist and curator walkthrough with Jennifer Ling Datchuk and Marisa Sage on Saturday, September 20, 2025, at noon, and a Nail Salon Artist Talk on Thursday, October 9, 2025, at 5:30 PM. During the talk, Datchuk and nail artist Marlene Tafoya will engage in conversation while having their nails done—drawing inspiration from the communal intimacy of salon spaces. The exhibition will be on view from September 19, 2025, through March 7, 2026. Join us for the opening reception at the University Art Museum on Friday, September 19, 2025, from 5:30 to 7:30 PM.

All programs are free and open to the public. For a complete calendar of events, visit uam.nmsu.edu.


About the artist:
Jennifer Ling Datchuk holds an MFA in Artisanry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a BFA in Crafts from Kent State University. She has received grants from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, and the Linda Lighton International Artist Exchange Program to research the global migrations of porcelain and blue and white pattern decoration. She was awarded a residency through Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum to conduct her studio practice at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany, and has participated in residencies at the Pottery Workshop (Jingdezhen, China), Vermont Studio Center, European Ceramic Work Center (Netherlands), Artpace (San Antonio, Texas), and the Arts/Industry Residency at the John Michael Kohler Center (Sheboygan, Wisconsin). Her work is in the permanent collections at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, San Antonio Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Pacific Asia Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, and the Cc Foundation in Shanghai, China. Datchuk is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Ceramics Department at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona and lives and maintains a studio practice in Phoenix, Arizona.
For more information on Jennifer Ling Datchuk, visit her website at https://jenniferlingdatchuk.com/ and follow her on Instagram @jenniferlingdatchuk.

Acknowledgements:
RIPENING at NMSU was made possible in part with support from The Community Foundation of Southern New Mexico, Devasthali Family Foundation Fund; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; Ruiz-Healy Art, San Antonio / New York; NMSU College of Arts & Sciences; Friends of the University Art Museum; and several private donors.

Museum Information:
The UAM is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm, at 1308 E. University Ave., Las Cruces, New Mexico, 88003. Admission to all programming is free and open to the public. For more information please visit uam.nmsu.edu.

Image Credit:
Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Under Construction, 2025, Performance. Photo credit: Camille Misty
All Image Credits

Quotes:

“The works in Ripening are situated in the monumental, the big identity shift to motherhood and bearing witness to the injustices to our families and communities. My greatest hope is this exhibition space becomes a site of sisterhood, solidarity, and solace for Las Cruces and beyond. “

–Jennifer Ling Datchuk

“With Ripening, Jennifer Ling Datchuk weaves personal and universal themes of care, labor, and female empowerment into the cultural fabric of Las Cruces, transforming the museum into a space for community reflection, healing, and solidarity through shared dialogue and affirmation”

–Marisa Sage, Director, University Art Museum