Jessica Boubetra b. 1989
Jessica Boubetra’s practice stands at the intersection of craft and digital.
Her work resonates with themes often found in science fiction narratives, where technology augments the natural world, and questions of materiality, memory, and the body are redefined through technological advancements. Through her hybrid practice, she creates a dialogue that addresses reflections on the evolving role of art in the post-digital era.
In works like Plantasia, Jessica Boubetra’s columns resemble relics of a distant future, as if nature itself had been reconstructed through a digital lens. The integration of organic, plant-like structures with parametric, computer-generated designs calls to mind a speculative world, where the boundary between nature and machine is fluid. The vegetal patterns evoke a replicated or enhanced nature through technology. In a manner of cybernetic futures, Jessica Boubetra’s sculptures explore the consequences of blending organic life with digital processes. Her works can be seen as artifacts from a world where natural growth is no longer purely organic, but mediated by technology, questioning what is “natural” in a post-digital age. Her exploration of digital craft extends this research into the realm of material objects, suggesting a future where even the most ancient and tactile forms like ceramics can be reimagined through technological augmentation.
In this regard, her practice reconciling in a way the handmade with the dematerialized. One could see her ceramic columns as symbols of a future in which craft and digital are not opposites but coexist in tension. The merging of traditional and modern techniques in today’s art practices raises a broader reflection on the role of technology in human life. Jessica Boubetra’s work seems to ask : where does human agency end, and where does the algorithm begin ? This question is embodied in the materiality of her hybrids ceramics, where human intuition and digital precision synchronize.
The integration of digital technologies in Boubetra’s practice does not erase the historical weight of ceramics as a medium but enhances it by creating a new layer of complexity. Her work is grounded in a deep awareness of the past, where traditional craftsmanship and digital processes merge into a singular form of expression. The artist’s pieces create a “temporal layering,” where the history of the material collides with the immediacy of technological innovation, thus reshaping our understanding of time in the context of artistic production. In her work, she creates a space where
Her practice exists in a space that is both ancient and futuristic, tactile and digital. Her sculptures echo the speculative futures, where the organic and the synthetic, the crafted and the mechanized, are indistinguishable. Through her work, Jessica Boubetra offers a vision of the future, where the material world itself is subject to digital transformation. Her ceramics thus become not just objects but fictive artifacts, probing the boundaries between tradition and the technological future.