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.