Jen Kiaba

Conceptual photographer and writer exploring coercive control, embodiment, and systems of belief. Hudson Valley, NY

Working primarily in self-portraiture to examine how systems of authority are internalized through the body. As an artist I am committed to telling stories:
Yours and Mine. My work is about creating a sacred space to be seen and honoring the deep inner voice. As a woman who grew up in a fringe religious movement, much of my journey has been about confronting false perceptions about myself and my o

wn self-limiting beliefs - oftentimes using the camera as my witness - in order to find my voice. It was through these self portraits that I discovered a deep understanding that the places of our darkest pain are often where the most profound and luminous healing can occur. That intersection of dark and light is a sacred space that I now want to offer to the world.

05/21/2026

Persephone (2019)

As a child, I translated the myth of Persephone into a warning — a girl forever punished after consuming something forbidden. The interpretation tracked with the theology of my upbringing.

Now I think what unsettles me is the unbearable complexity of the story. She is coerced, but she also must participate in her own binding. Not because she is weak, but because she is hungry. Because survival and longing so often blur the boundaries between choice and coercion.

And yet the underworld still marks her. She does not return untouched. She belongs partly to both worlds afterward.

I think many of us carry experiences that altered us in ways we cannot fully undo. Survival may deepen our understanding of ourselves, but it also leaves residue. Some descents change the shape of a life permanently.

From Burdens of a White Dress.

05/06/2026

There are seasons where we cannot tell whether we are lost or simply between shores.

I made this image in 2017 as part of my “Wayfaring” series, during a period when I was thinking often about disorientation, distance, and the strange tension between drifting and agency. The oars remained in the boat intentionally — even then, I think some part of me needed to believe direction was still possible.

Years later, the image unexpectedly found a second life as an international cover for a translated edition of Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends with Us”. I still find it fascinating how photographs continue gathering meanings long after they leave us.

Row Your Boat, 2017 from the series “Wayfaring.”

04/29/2026

A Red Realization (2019)
from Burdens of a White Dress

There is a moment—
quiet, almost imperceptible—
when something shifts.

Not outwardly.
Nothing has changed yet.
But you can feel it:

the knowing that you cannot return
to what you once believed.

—

Some realizations arrive loudly.
Others surface slowly,
like something rising through the body
before the mind can name it.

This was the beginning of that moment.

—

04/22/2026

My Mind is a Lie (2013)

I know all of the words
to a language
I no longer speak.

—

Leaving felt like crossing a border
I hadn’t known was there.

On the other side,
I realized I had lost my mother tongue.

From the Burdens of a White Dress series

04/15/2026

There are ways of learning to think
that don’t feel like thinking at all.

More like a quiet narrowing—
until only one response remains.

—

You practice it slowly at first.

Repeating the right words.
Correcting the wrong ones.
Watching yourself
from just outside your own body.

—

Over time, the distance closes.

The voice becomes yours.
The movement becomes automatic.

And what once felt like pressure
begins to feel like choice.

—

It can be difficult to locate
the moment that shift happens.

The point where obedience
stops being something imposed
and becomes something lived.

Thought Reform, 2019
from Burdens of a White Dress

04/08/2026

There was a way I used to move through the world
that felt almost like being carried.

Not quite numb.
Not quite present.

Just… slightly behind myself.

As though my body had already agreed to something
my voice hadn’t caught up to yet.

—

I didn’t have a word for it then.

Only the sense that something was off.
That I was participating in moments
I hadn’t fully chosen.

—

It can take a long time to recognize
that state as something other than normal.

And longer still
to feel the moment where it begins.

I still recognize it sometimes.
The feeling of being just a step behind myself.

“Sleepwalking” 2015,
from the series Burdens of a White Dress

04/01/2026

Within systems of coercive control, even resistance can be shaped in advance.

Andromeda (2020)
From the series Burdens of a White Dress.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of Dr ‘s concept of “bounded choice”—
the way systems of coercive control shape not only behavior, but the field of what feels possible.

Within those systems, harm is often carried out by people who were themselves formed inside the same constraints.

This doesn’t erase responsibility.
But it complicates how responsibility is understood.

Not all participation is freely chosen.
And not all awareness arrives at once.

Sometimes what looks like compliance is the only available way to move.

03/25/2026

This piece is part of an ongoing examination of coercive control and the long mechanics of exiting such systems.

The Vast Emptiness of the Sea (2020)
From the series Burdens of a White Dress.

Not all departures feel like movement.

Sometimes they register as drift—
a body suspended between what it was
and what it has not yet become.

There is no ground here.
No clear direction.
Only distance.

03/17/2026

A childhood friend messaged me last night to say she had seen me quoted while reading the book “The Culting of America” by and

The quote is from an essay I wrote in 2021, “Toxic Positivity and the Thought-Terminating Cliché,” as part of my Lessons on Leaving blog series.

I wrote that piece trying to understand how certain phrases—often framed as faith or positivity—can interrupt critical thought and quiet cognitive dissonance.

Lately, I’ve found myself returning to those ideas as similar language shows up in broader cultural and political spaces.

I’m grateful to see those ideas continue to move through the world, even as the conditions that shaped them feel increasingly present.

It means a great deal to be included in this broader conversation.

03/11/2026

This piece is part of an ongoing examination of coercive control and the long mechanics of exiting such systems.

Unfurled (2018)
From the series Burdens of a White Dress.

Some departures begin quietly.

Not with a declaration,
but with a loosening of tension—
a body beginning to move differently inside the same world.

Recognition has already happened.
What comes next is less certain.

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Kingston, NY

Website

https://www.jenkiaba.com/

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