Listen to what you see
My work operates as a kind of emotional seismographer, detecting and translating frequencies that exist just beneath the threshold of ordinary perception.
I listen to what I see, picking up on what others might pass by. There are micro-gestures and fleeting connections happening all around us that make up the actual texture of being alive, and my practice has become a way of translating these feelings into visual form. Sometimes this calls for the tenderness, and sometimes it demands the intensity.
This isn't eclecticism for its own sake, but a methodical exploration of how different visual languages can access different kinds of truth about human experience. What emerges is an ongoing romance with being fully present to life in all its forms.
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Jessica Tok (Sydney, b. 1996) is an artist and independent curator with a practice spaning painting, digital media, and photography, often moving fluidly between intimate portraiture and confrontational digital aesthetics. She is the founder of Stars Don't Die, an artist-led platform that transforms personal experience with sarcoma into collective dialogue and memory-making.
As both an artist and emerging curator, she creates frameworks that bring together diverse voices and perspectives, particularly drawn to projects that refuse easy categorization or resolution.
Get in contact here.
Education
MA (Art Curation), University of Sydney | 2025
Dissertation Research Interests: Artist-run initiatives and alternative exhibition ecologies, exploring personal and societal thresholds through archival practices.
BCom in Finance, Minor in Psychology, University of Sydney | 2019
Projects
The Saddest Birthday Dinner (In Progress), Digital Curatorial Project | 2025
Things We Keep Warm, Art Exhibition and Performance, Goodspace Gallery | 2024
Bloomwork (Spring Racing), Merivale Events | 2023
Writing
Yolŋu Power: The Art of Yirrkala
| Review
The Saddest Birthday Dinner | Curatorial Essay
Oh Apollonia | Personal Essay
Always Modern | Critical Essay
On Whose Terms? | Critical Essay
The Rites of When | Review
Contact