Jesse Siegel (b. 1984 in Cancun, Mexico) lives and works between Antwerp (BE) and Amsterdam (NL). Siegel is an artist researcher working with photography, 3D rendering and video. His practice is concerned with the spread of a "global default" across built environments and mirrored in social constructs. He focuses on "New Towns" such as Cancun, examining the erasure, displacement and migration. Siegel uses the corporate visual language of prefabrication and design, teasing out an opaque middle ground in the overlap between newness and nostalgia.

Born and raised in Cancun, a New Town founded in the 1970s by the Mexican government to increase tourism, Siegel focuses on the pitfalls of rapid growth and forgettable objects that can come to represent a collective memory. Having both Mexican and American nationality and speaking both Spanish and English at a native level has resulted in his works often dealing with duality; both the execution and in content matter. His method of working; starting from a photo or reference drawing and building up the image via computer software, leads to ambiguous images that possess both physical and digital traces. His work questions the ecology and memory of cheap disposable travel via his own lived experiences.

Siegel holds a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in Portland, OR (USA) and an MA in Artistic Research from the Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague (NL). In 2020 he was a fellow in residency at ZK/U (Center for Art and Urbanistics), Berlin, Germany and in 2023 he was an artist-in-residency at Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan. In 2024 he released an artist publication funded by amsterdams fonds voor de kunst and fonds kwadraat, titled Default Alpha.

As an artist, he has exhibited work in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Most recently as part of the itinerant group exhibition "Fairy Tales" in Antwerp, Seoul, Tokyo and Mallorca.