On Jess X. Snow's “In the Future...”

This historic moment finds us all grasping for a sustainable way forward through a racially divided country, enormous economic disparities, the ongoing weight of patriarchy, an endangered planet, and of course, a global pandemic. Artist Jess X. Snow offers us a vision for how to meet this conflicted world in the work shown here. Their framing of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities centers peace in the wake of continued violence. Snow gifts us the opportunity to imagine a new world that protects and celebrates the vast range of beauty and humanity that we see within these East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Mixed Asian people of various gender identities.

Against the blur of life on the streets, these portraits hold people in moments of quiet sanctuary and create a renewed presence, and a temporary connection between the earth-bound viewer and the liberated figures Snow conjures. Inspired by karaoke subtitles, each portrait and each line of animated poetry gestures toward a loving future without anti-Asian violence, which necessitates a future without anti-Blackness, white supremacy, policing, nations, binaries, and borders. Snow empowers us with the crucial first step of bold imagination, and opens a portal toward liberation and healing.

Natasha Sinha and David Zinn