Jaclyn Jacunski is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited locally and nationally in museums, public spaces, and galleries. Her work engages the intersections of the aesthetic and the political by using research as a tool to interrogate contested spaces. This interrogation is a search for understanding and attention in political controversies that surround land, communities, and acts of resistance. Known for using materials scavenged from building sites, often in gentrifying neighborhoods, Jacunski reveals how neighborhood landscapes become expressions of a lived experience resisting powerful cultural systems such as gentrification, environmental threats, and state violence. Currently, she is the Director of Community Engagement at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she works closely with local leaders and residents of the West Side neighborhood of North Lawndale to develop art and design programming with the community. Jacunski has an M.F.A. in Printmaking from SAIC and a B.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has taught at SAIC and Harrington College of Design.