Visual Artist

Jessica De Vreeze

MIAMI, USA

Jessica de Vreeze is a Jewish French-American visual artist based in Miami, born in Paris. Working across photography, painting, mixed media, and immersive formats, her practice explores the relationship between people and the environments they inhabit, developing a kind of cartography of human experience in which emotion, memory, and presence leave both visible and invisible traces across space and time.

An artist at heart from the start, she spent a decade practicing law in Luxembourg before fully transitioning into her artistic career. When the moment aligned, she embraced this path completely, bringing her professional journey into coherence with her long-standing commitment to creation.

Her work has been exhibited internationally in New York, Miami, Paris, Luxembourg, São Paulo, and beyond, and has appeared in institutional contexts including the United Nations in New York during Les Journées Internationales de la Francophonie in 2018, where she represented the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Her work is held in museum collections, including the Coral Gables Museum, where she received the People's Choice Award, and has been shown in exhibitions connected to institutions such as The Bass. Her pieces are part of private collections in more than 60 cities worldwide, including the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection in Chicago.

Jessica is the founder of Unchained Mothering, a 501(c)(3) organization that brings visibility to the often-overlooked contributions of mothers and women through art, storytelling, and community engagement. Through this initiative, she has brought together artists from around the world to collaborate on projects bridging personal narrative and collective experience—including five Jewish women among the eight currently featured, whose stories inform broader reflections on memory, transmission, resilience, and identity.

Her current practice extends into immersive and multidimensional formats, blending traditional materials with digital layers, including augmented reality developed in collaboration with digital artists, allowing viewers to enter evolving visual and emotional landscapes. Her visual language draws on the expressive energy of Fauvism and a photographic sensitivity to light and shadow, where contrast becomes a tool for revealing tension, vulnerability, and connection.

What are you making right now?

I’m currently developing new mixed-media works inspired by recent travels across the United States and Europe. These pieces continue my exploration of memory, identity, movement, and the way places quietly shape who we become. Alongside my personal practice, I continue expanding Unchained Mothering, the nonprofit I founded to make visible the often unseen emotional and creative contributions of caregivers through art, storytelling, exhibitions, and community engagement. This past year has included exhibitions in the United States and Brazil, museum acquisitions, and new photographic works that later evolve through painting and mixed media. Every new series continues to ask the same question: how can art help us see one another more deeply?

If you could spend an hour with anyone you admire, living or dead, who would it be and what would you ask them?

I would choose photographer Dave Heath. His black-and-white photographs possess an extraordinary intimacy. He had the rare ability to create profound emotional closeness while often remaining physically at a distance from his subjects. His work reminds me that empathy is not measured by proximity but by the quality of one’s attention. I would ask him how he earned that level of trust without disrupting the authenticity of a moment, how he knew when an image had revealed enough, and whether he consciously searched for vulnerability or simply recognized it when it appeared. More than learning about photography, I would want to understand how he looked at people—with such compassion, patience, and honesty.

What would you like people to understand about your work?

My work begins with photography but rarely ends there. Through painting, drawing, and mixed media, I transform real moments into emotional landscapes that invite viewers to pause, reflect, and connect. Whether I photograph a stranger across the world, a quiet street, or a fleeting gesture, I’m searching for what unites us beyond culture, language, or circumstance. My work is rooted in curiosity, trust, and the belief that every person carries a story worth seeing. As both an artist and the founder of Unchained Mothering, I also explore the invisible experiences that shape our lives—family, identity, resilience, belonging, and human dignity. I hope my work reminds people that beauty often exists in unexpected places and that truly seeing one another is one of the most meaningful acts we can offer.

What medium do you work in and what drew you to it?

Photography allows me to recognize a moment; painting allows me to understand it. The camera captures what exists in an instant, while painting gives me the time to reflect, reinterpret, and reveal what remains after the moment has passed. Moving between photography and painting allows reality and emotion to coexist. I don’t see the two mediums as separate. They are part of the same conversation. The photograph becomes the memory, while the painting explores its emotional truth. This process reflects how we experience life itself—not simply through facts, but through memory, feeling, and meaning.

What do you need in your workspace to spark creativity?

Curiosity more than anything. Although I love working in my studio, many of my strongest ideas begin outside of it—while traveling, walking through unfamiliar places, meeting people, or simply paying attention to everyday life. I need natural light, my camera, photographs I’ve collected along the way, books, music, and enough freedom to experiment without worrying whether every piece will succeed. Above all, I need space to observe. Creativity rarely comes from forcing ideas. It comes from remaining open to the unexpected.

Has your identity, culture, heritage, or community influenced your creative practice?

Absolutely. I was born in Paris, lived for many years in Luxembourg, and now call Miami home. Growing up and living across different cultures has shaped the way I observe people. Rather than focusing on what separates us, I am continually drawn to what connects us. My Jewish identity has influenced my work less through imagery than through values. The importance of memory, questioning, learning, family, resilience, welcoming others, and contributing to something greater than oneself naturally informs both my artistic practice and the nonprofit I founded, Unchained Mothering. Whether I photograph a stranger, paint a familiar place, or create community-based projects, I hope to encourage empathy and deeper understanding. I believe every person carries inherent dignity, and that paying close attention—to people, places, and stories—is itself an act of respect.

What does success look like to you as a creative?

Success is creating work that continues to matter long after it leaves my studio. It means making art that people choose to live with because it speaks to them while also creating projects that strengthen communities and encourage dialogue. Personally, success is having the freedom to continue creating with integrity, supporting my family through my work, and using art to build meaningful connections across cultures and generations. Awards and exhibitions are meaningful milestones, but they are not the destination. Success is knowing that something I created helped another person feel seen.