This story was updated on Dec. 4, 2024 at 12:12 am.

In Jenna Ferayo’s video portfolio, the camera acts as an observer – crafting a piece of digital nostalgia just by being witness to time passing. Sitting in her corner of a living room, the third-year student at Parsons School of Design rolls a cigarette on her coffee table before moving toward a pocket of sun on the couch. 

“I’m almost just like an eye,” Ferayo said, after an exhale of smoke leaks through the cracked window. 

Observation is her artistic method and her creative process. Allured by what can come from simply watching a moment unfurl, Ferayo is in search of what lies on the outskirts of candid chaos.

Intention and planning are anathema to Ferayo who is still coasting along the terrain of experimentation. She considers herself a multimedia artist, with her untamed flair trailing across the specific concentrations of filmmaking, photography, zine-making, and her newest vehicle for storytelling: what she calls “video portraiture.” Her soon-to-be-released video portraiture series will observe one person and their everyday idiosyncrasies in each film. 

“It’s more like a portrait,” she said, “but it’s not a photograph. It’s like moving stills of them.” 

Her role as the videographer is to gather a story from the narrative unfolding in front of her VHS camera. “It’s less planning and more fluid,” she shrugs, secure in spontaneity. It comes naturally to her. 

“I bought my first little mini VHS at the end of sophomore year of high school,” Ferayo remembered, reminiscing on the days she was making art before she knew it was art. “I was just doing bullshit, filming my friends doing donuts in a parking lot, or smoking, or going to the beach. I grew up in San Diego and a lot of people weren’t as creatively open-minded.” But once she took her practice to New York for college, Ferayo has felt her art much more embraced. “Having that community and that acceptance of what you’re doing… I was like, oh shit, I could actually fucking do this,” Ferayo said, her eyes wide with excitement from behind a row of curly bangs. 

She began producing experimental videos, her portfolio culminating with “It’s a Riot” and “Comeback2earth” studded with quick cuts and montages of unpolished youth. “It’s a Riot” was inspired by the Riot Grrrl movement, with layered VHS footage of girls applying makeup in dirty mirrors and jumping on unmade beds, all strung together to look like a moving punk magazine. “Just anti-commercial shit. Shit that’s really sporadic,” Ferayo said with a roguish grin, referencing her jagged camera angles and affinity for raw footage. 

“Comeback2earth” is more erratic: a grainy collage of footage from Ferayorni’s home in San Diego taken during the fleeting summer before her move to New York. Drunk on youth and maybe tequila, her friends dance, sing, chase butterflies, stand in the street, and stick their heads out car windows. Navigating youth in the face of transition bleeds through the backdrop of this video; the VHS quality coats the disorder of adolescence in a nostalgic haze. 

My themes with photography and film and print all sort of relate to that of transformation, adapting to the passage of time, and how that all aligns with identity.”

Jenna Ferayo

In her two latest zine releases – Solace in Fall 2022 and Entropy in Spring 2023 – she also explored the vulnerable mess of discovering oneself when change is the only consistency. In Entropy, Ferayo gathered archival images, paintings, poems, video stills, photos, and more from 20 different collaborators reflecting on their own transitions to adulthood. Through a curative process, she inspired artistic voices of other young creatives to work in harmony with her own. “Between those months, I actually became a completely different person but didn’t even realize it, and I wasn’t able to fathom it all while it was happening,” Ferayo said, referencing how creating this zine processed what once seemed lost in a time warp.

Instead of focusing on how isolating change can be, Ferayo’s art touches on the universality of time shoving a fist down youth’s throat and telling us all to grow up. In turn, her work offers visibility to other youth, especially young creatives, who are struggling to believe in themselves and their art. “I want to specifically speak to those kids and connect with them and be like, ‘We’re all going through this like it’s fucking chill. Just stick to what your intuition is.’” Ferayo said. 

To give back to the community that encouraged her to make art, Ferayo is using her series of video portraitures to illustrate the art of other people’s existences – the way they move, the way they dress, the way they create. 

“I’ve learned I become very close friends with people I work with. I get to know them because I don’t view [our art] as a transactional thing,” Ferayo said, with respect to her collaborative process. With her video portraitures, the relationship between Ferayo and the filmed subject is the art itself. “I really try to solidify me getting to know the person in the process of me documenting them,” Ferayo said. 

Her upcoming video portraiture series is debuting with “Ursula” and “Jayi”, both named after their subjects.“Ursula” was filmed in the New York July heat, following Ursula and her angsty cigarette along downtown streets. “Jayi” follows its subject through the stairwell of her apartment building in Chinatown. Blurring the lines of documentation and art, Ferayo is the observer, the artist, and just a friend with a camera. “It’s not short film,” Ferayo said, adding that she wants to abandon categorical labeling. “Maybe I’m just making shit up.” 

Ferayo knows what she’s doing, even if she rides on the spur of the moment. Her loyalty to the unrehearsed narrative cultivates a space for art and connection to coalesce – she is materializing the intimacy of friendship, documenting a shared memory, and curating nostalgia. 

Correction: A previous version of this article contained a different surname of the artist. At her request, the surname was changed to Ferayo. The article has been updated to reflect the change.