A new mural in Philadelphia by Jess X. Snow depicts two abstracted female figures, one young, and one old, both formed of rippling branches, leaves, flowers, and birds in flight. Entitled “A Daughter Migrates Toward The Mother Earth,” the mural was created with the support of public art nonprofit Mural Arts Philadelphia.
Jess X. Snow is a queer asian-canadian artist, filmmaker, poet and educator. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently studying directing in the MFA program for film at the NYU Tisch School of The Arts. As a result of the rootlessness and migrations that marked her childhood, she developed a stutter which she overcame through her discovery of visual and written language.
Her work explores survival, memory, joy, and our relationship to the Earth by amplifying the voices of women, queer people of color, and migrants who refuse to be defined by borders and time.
Her public art and murals have been featured in the The LA Times, PBS Newshour, Adobe, NBC Asian America, The UN Human Rights Council and on indoor and outdoor walls throughout the US. Her film work have been supported by the Tribeca Film Institute Migration Co/Lab, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center, the Visual Communications Armed with a Camera Fellowship. Her poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and included in the anthology: Bettering American Poetry, and has taken her to stages such as the US Institute for Peace, and universities and backyards nation wide. Her first chapbook of poetry is forthcoming.
She is a member of the Justseeds Artists Co-operative and a teaching artist who has worked with previously incarcerated families, migrant and indigenous youth communities to speak their truth with poetry and transcend trauma with large-scale mural making
In addition to mural-making, Snow is also a poet, filmmaker, and educator. Snow describes her multi-disciplinary work as exploring “survival, joy, and our relationship to the Earth by amplifying the voices of those who refuse to be defined by borders, heteronormativity, gender, color, legislation and time.” You can follow her work and travels on Instagram and Twitter. Snow also designed a screen print with similar imagery available through Justseeds.
