Artist

Marisa Jahn

Via New York, NY, USA

Of Chinese and Ecuadorian descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist and the founder of Studio REV- (as in to rev an engine), a nonprofit organization whose public art projects combine creativity, bold ideas and sound research to address critical issues impacting low-wage workers, immigrants and teens. Jahn also initiated El Bibliobandido (or "story thief"), an ongoing living legend built around a masked bandit who, ravenous for stories, roves the jungles of Honduras terrorizing little kids until they offer him stories they’ve written; Video Slink Uganda, a project that transposes experimental videos by African diaspora video artists into the Ugandan black market; a contagious public art competition in Tajikistan for the best ten-second poem juried by the Oprah of Northern Tajikistan; and a public art nanny hotline (think NPR’s "Car Talk," but for nannies) about the New York State Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights. Created in collaboration with the National Domestic Workers' Alliance, Jahn's latest project is the NannyVan, a bright orange mobile design studio and sound lab that "accelerates the movement for domestic workers' rights nationwide." An MIT Research Fellow and graduate of UC Berkeley (BA) and MIT (MS), Jahn has presented work at venues such as The White House, the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center and the Studio Museum of Harlem; received grants and awards such as Tribeca Film Institute’s New Media Fund and the Rockefeller Cultural Innovation Fund; and garnered attention in media outlets such as the New York Times, Univision, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, ArtForum, Art in America, PBS Newshour, Boing Boing, Discovery Channel and more.