Jared Theis was born in 1977 in Oklahoma City. He earned an MFA from the University of California, Davis in 2012. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

“The past seven years I have been building a type of personal mythology or system that follows a group of fantastical creatures through time and stages of evolution. These investigations are realized through sculpture, installation, performance and video. I use the system as a lens to look back at life on earth, human societies and our own evolutionary path. I’m interested in vulnerability and how organisms adapt to their environment. The narratives in my work are reinterpretations of mythological themes I learned from childhood. I explore the origins of these characters, their relationship to their environment and spiritual growth.

I play the role of these characters, utilizing sculptural suits that connect me to these spaces. The suit becomes a means of entering these worlds and exploring different states of being. During the performances I imagine myself as a survivalist creature, enacting a series of rituals that have deep roots in my own experiences. I see these rituals as a means of reconnecting with a very distant, deeply embedded part of myself.”