Jess X. Snow
Our free Public Art Series continues with Jess X. Snow’s In the Future…, a film installation that engages passersby in envisioning a safe future for Asian American communities. In a dreamlike solace, portraits of East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Mixed Asian and Pacific Islander people of various gender identities bring an animated poem to life, gesturing toward a world without anti-Asian violence, white supremacy, policing, binaries, and borders.
Jess X. Snow (they/them) makes public art in the form of vibrant, speculative, and science-fiction- inspired murals offering boldly hopeful visions that transcend oppressive forces. Their acclaimed short films Afterearth, Safe Among Stars, and Little Sky, among others, have, with breathtaking cinematography, charted the journeys of characters from queer Asian communities across reckonings with trauma and into new horizons of possibility. At our theater, Jess combines the genres of their artistry to date — cinema, public art, and poetry — in a hybrid work that, like their murals, asks the public to participate in the act of imagining — and, like their films, captivates with its vital heartbeat.
Jess X. Snow, poem and still from Little Sky, 2021. Pictured: Chinese-American drag performer Wo Chan (A.K.A. Pearl Harbor) and Japanese American musician Kyoko Takenaka (Jinjabrew). Photography by Zamarin Wahdat, Costume Design by Sueann Leung, and Color by Ayumi Ashley.
Jess says, “This work is completed by the audience and also by the site and neighborhood it inhabits. Since we are currently unable to access the spaces of imagination that indoor theater offers, public art can fill the void. Theater is an impermanent medium with a beating heart — and I wanted this installation to capture that energy. A still image wouldn’t have been enough for this location: I want the future we’re calling in to feel alive, tender, and fragile. The animated text of the poem (designed with inspiration from karaoke subtitles), invites us to stop in our tracks, listen closely and engage intimately with the humanity of the portraits.”
Snow’s installation will also feature a still from their short film Little Sky on the building’s façade, adjacent to the moving work, and bearing the final line of the poem, making its powerful conclusion persistent.
The installation project is art-directed by Tiffany Jen and features type animation by Michael Enten, cinematography by Jess X. Snow, Zamarin Wahdat, and Noelia María Muíño González, and music by Natalie Rose LeBrecht. Featured in the installations are portraits of the Asian community: Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Wangping Oshiro, Kit Yan, Wo Chan, Nathan Singhapok, Poppy Liu, Vera Lam, Tiffany Jen, Philip De Guzman, Fenton Li, Kyoko Takenaka, Isabella Borgeson, Austin Deng, and Yiqing Zhao.
Photo of Jess X. Snow by Texas Isaiah.
About Jess X. Snow
Jess X. Snow is a film director, public artist, poet, children’s book author and community arts educator who creates queer asian immigrant stories that transcend borders and binaries. Through narrative film, large-scale murals, children's books and community art education, they are working toward a future where BIPOC folks may witness themselves heroic on the big screen and city walls & discover in their own bodies; a sanctuary for healing and collective liberation.
They bring their background in social movement art, poetry and trauma-informed healing into their film work which has been supported by the Tribeca Film Institute, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center, and The National Film Board of Canada. Their shorts have screened in over 30 film festivals internationally. They are currently in development for their first feature, supported by Canada Council For The Arts.
Their artwork has been featured in international protests and social movements. Their murals have appeared on walls across the country, and in the Ford Foundation for Social Justice, the NYU A/P/A Institute, Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts and on PBS Newshour, The LA Times, and the SF Chronicle. Every year they travel the country to lecture and teach workshops at high schools, community organizations and universities.
