Born in Sydney, NSW. Lives and works in Sydney, NSW.
JD Reforma is an interdisciplinary artist whose research-based practice encompasses sculpture, performance, installation, video, photography and writing. The meaning explored in his work is embedded in different racialised and classed contexts: the lived experiences of the Asian-Australian diaspora; popular culture and the cult of celebrity; corporate branding and institutional critique; and political dynasticism and cultural imperialism. He is also a humourist and satirist, a practice enacted online through the Instagram persona Keeping Up With the KPIs, a meme-based account in which the ubiquitous Kardashian/Jenner celebrity dynasty are positioned as imaginary figures within an institutional critique of the art world.
His work Castor and Pollux is a dual portrait of the artist alongside his aunt and godmother, Butch. Using various objects and ephemera the artist has created a ‘portrait’ of their relationship in the shape of the constellation of Gemini, their shared astrological sign.
The objects chosen – objects, clothing, photographs, religious icons – allude to certain frameworks of how we build and understand our personal identities. In this sense Castor and Pollux is both a portrait and a map – anatomical coordinates that trace the deeper emotional, biological, familial, spiritual, and cosmological cartography of our interiors.
Key exhibitions and commissions include Confidently Beautiful, with a heart, for Halò, 2017, curated by Katrina Cashman, part of the Bayanihan Philippine Art Project, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney, which was also exhibited as part of Club Ate at Blacktown Arts Centre, curated by Filipinx-Australian artists Bhenji Ra and Justin Shoulder; Coconut Republic, 2017, which was awarded the contemporary prize at the 2017 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award at Campbelltown Arts Centre; and 48HR Incident, 2015, curated by Aaron Seeto, Pedro De Almeida and Toby Chapman, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney.
He is a 2020 City of Sydney Live/Work Space Artist; a 2019/20 Carriageworks Resident Artist; and a participant in the 2018 4A Beijing Studio Program. Recent and upcoming projects include Do You Know This Feeling?, curated by Sebastian Henry-Jones, Firstdraft, Sydney; the 2018 and 2019 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, Artspace, Sydney; The TV Show, curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Wollongong Art Gallery; The Fullness of Time, with Caroline Garcia, Verge Gallery, University of Sydney; Beauty Community, COMA, Sydney; HI-VIS, 2020, curated by Luke Letourneau, Casula Powerhouse; as well a major new solo commission to be launched at Bus Projects, Melbourne in 2020.