Jassie Rios, M.F.A. Headshot

Department

  • Art
  • School

  • Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art
  • Expertise

  • Conceptual Drawing
  • Sound Art
  • Darkroom and Digital Photography
  • Jassie Rios is an artist, DJ and computer musician. Her research and creative work spreads across the areas of drawing, experimental music performance, language, sound art, instrument design, video and site specific installations.  She examines the space between humans, the natural environment, and mobile recording technologies through the lens of improvisation and systems of chance.

    Originally, from the border of Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico —  two cultures are like having two records to sample, and the Rio Grande acts like a fader between the two. Hybridity, nomadism, code switching, tinkering utilitarian objects to hack new instruments, a gateway and Indigenous Mexican culture are rooted to her practice. 

    A recipient of the 2018 Margaret Guthman Award for Instrument Design at Georgia Tech for gramFX, an instrument programmed in Pure Data.  She has performed/exhibited at the Katzen Art Center, Washington, DC, Torpedo Factory Art Center, Arlington, VA, Rhizome DC, Washington, DC, WaveFarm, Acra, NY, ShapeShifter Lab, Gowanus, NY, 2016 Pure Data Conference at Stevens Institute for Technology in Hoboken, NJ. Artist in Residence at Signal Culture, Owego, NY.  Her poems are archived in Ditch, an international magazine for contemporary poetry.

    Rios holds a Master of Arts in Audio Technology from American University with a focus in Computer Music (2018), Master of Fine Arts in Studio Drawing from Maryland Institute College of Art (2011) and Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Painting from Texas State University (2002). 

    Rios lives and works in Washington, D.C.