Jess X. Snow
2022 HEAR US Awardee
Graduate Film Class of 2022
Jess X. Snow (b. 1992) is a non-binary neuro-divergent writer/director, public artist, and poet, who creates genre-defying inter-generational stories from a queer Asian immigrant lens. Spanning large scale augmented reality murals, childrens books, and narrative films, their stories explore how care, intimacy and imagination can help us disrupt borders and binaries and end cycles of violence. They see the process of filmmaking and mural-making as a way to deepen coalitions amongst Asian, Black and Indigenous communities and open a portal toward loving and abolitionist futures.
They are currently an MFA thesis student at NYU Grad Film as an Ang Lee Scholar. Their film and immersive work has been supported by awards and grants and residencies from the Tribeca Film Institute, BAFTA, the Smithsonian, Canada Council For The Arts, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the National Film Board of Canada. Their narrative short, Little Sky (2021) is currently on the world festival circuit and has played at international festivals such as BFI Flare, Outfest, Frameline, Hollyshorts, Flickerfest amongst others. They are currently in development for two narrative feature films. Their artwork has been featured in international protests, billboards, bus shelters, broadway theaters, and museums and covered by PBS Newshour, The LA Times, The NY Times Magazine, and the SF Chronicle. Their murals, which center Asian/Pacific, Black, Indigenous femmes and queer & trans people of color, often created in collaboration with those communities, can be found on city walls across the country.
Project
In The Future Our Asian Community Is Safe
"In the Future Our Asian Community is Safe" is a mural in NY Chinatown, accompanied by augmented reality and an immersive website which envisions a future where we transcend anti-Asian racism, policing, and borders by cultivating healing, community, collective imagination and solidarity.
Envisioned and painted with youth in the W.O.W. Project community in Chinatown and BIPOC community members, the mural depicts a youth holding a red envelope casting a spotlight on Chinatown elders in monumental embrace as Indigenous plants of Lenapehoking (NYC) grow from the concrete and soar into the sky above them.
Visitors will be able to use augmented reality to see the mural animate to life — the Indigenous plants will bloom and reclaim the streets, and diasporic birds from Asia will weave through an elder’s embrace. The project will also explore how our visions of safety for Asian communities are interconnected with the sovereignty of Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities. Visitors globally will be invited into this portal to share a love letter that manifests safety, mutual care, and communal protection.
