Painting & Writing
Born in 1990, Jamie-May Minjie belongs to a generation that was often named before it could name itself. A Celebration (2024) reclaims the labels society placed on the millennials. This body of work speaks to the assertion that, in embracing the self, they are discovering a path toward healing.
A Celebration (2024) is a contemplative body of work that reflects on the spirit of this era, its turbulence, repetition, and quiet perseverance. Drawing from cycles of personal failure and renewal, the artist charts a familiar yet evolving journey, where past tumorous lows form the very peaks from which new perspectives emerge. The work suggests that beauty is not despite the struggle, but born from it.
In this series, Minjie reflects on a culture that turned inward. Self-love became a tool for unlearning: “We call ourselves ceos (small caps) while running after awakening, breaking that chain of identification, and shaking off the separation to be in the One. We treasure the craft of caring for and loving ourselves until we become so invincibly independent. We bust the guilty trick of embracing pleasure, on a quest to break generational trauma, and on the way to setting ourselves free. We then blur the ‘I’ by removing its capitalization and retreat to where things are decentralized. We document ourselves, publish ourselves, incorporate ourselves, and celebrate ourselves.”
Through a blend of existential inquiry and poetic introspection, the series explores the idea of life not as something actively controlled, but as an unfolding spectacle. The artist proposes that the self exists simultaneously as participant and observer, seated in the "stimulation seat," watching life crash forward like waves against the face. In this view, existence is not a performance we direct, but a prewritten script in which we find ourselves cast. Each misstep and failure, rather than detracting, intensifies the narrative arc of becoming. A Celebration suggests that to live a human life is to be woven into a continuous process: fluid, cinematic, and perpetually unfolding.
