Her work confronts issues including police violence against Black people, the systemic disenfranchisement of Black voters, and the financial incentives of policies that disproportionately affect Black people. Many of her works feature stark, understated black-and-white maps, graphs, or data sets, occasionally accompanied by text, that address legibility, translation, media saturation, and notions of freedom.

Valentine conducts extensive research that layers her materials with symbols of the abuses of slavery and destabilization of democracy. This has included the use of paper made from Sea Isle cotton, a specific crop grown on Southern plantations, and ink derived from iron rust and gall nuts that slowly deteriorates the surface below it. Valentine thinks of her work as a catalyst for conversation: “My work intends to recontextualize sociopolitical and socioeconomic data by bringing it closer to the lived experiences that it intends to illustrate.”1

Valentine received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and MFA from Stanford University. She has received support from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Graham Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is one of the cofounders of Black Lunch Table, an oral history archival project, along with fellow artist Heather Hart. Her work has appeared in Studio Museum exhibitions such as Frequency (2005) and The Bearden Project (2012).

1) “5 Questions for Jina Valentine BFA ‘01,” Carnegie Mellon University School of Art, November 30, 2020, art.cmu.edu/news/alumni-news/5-questions-for-jina-valentine-bfa-01/.