JinJin Xu is an artist and poet working between Brooklyn, Shanghai, and Macau. Her interdisciplinary work threads mis/remembrance and self/erasure, unearthing censored memories, linguistic rituals, and intimacies that haunt the undertow of our tongues.
Melding installation, moving image, and poetry, her site-responsive, decolonial practice inhabits temporal mediums and hybrid spaces—a WWII air raid shelter in Singapore, an opium warehouse in the former East India Company of Macau, a Kobe hotel bathroom, a cult mansion in the Hudson Valley, the mast of the first Chinese-built cargo ship, an underground Shanghai nightclub, the Pearl River Estuary connecting mainland China and Macau.
JinJin is the author of two chapbooks: There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife (Radix Media), winner of the Own Voices Prize and recommended by The New York Times, and This Is My Testimony (BWR). Her debut collection, Against This Earth, We Knock, won the Noemi Press Book Award and is forthcoming in Spring 2028.
Her honors include the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award, residency at MASS MoCA, and finalist selections for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship and the National Poetry Series. In 2024, she was named by Forbes China as one of the 100 Most Influential Chinese. She has collaborated with Christopher Doyle on a film project of 30s Shanghai, Anne Carson on a translation of Sappho, and Liang Shao Ji on measuring the pyramids with silkworms.
A Thomas J. Watson Fellow, she holds a BA from Amherst College and MFAs from NYU (Poetry, Lillian Vernon Fellow) and Bard College (Moving Image, Diversity Fellow). During her Watson year, she recorded secret utterances across four continents with mothers experiencing unusual forms of dislocation.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 to utter sounds of awakening, Accent Sisters, New York
2025 What Would You Say If You Could?, Butter Room, Macau
2024 Against This Earth, We Knock, How Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2023 108 Days, System, Shanghai, China
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026 宅生记，Zhai Shen Ji, Centro de Cultura e Artes Performativas Cardeal Newman de Macau
Reassembly, MFA Thesis Exhibition, Bard College, NY
The Rest Was A Fabrication, Eunoia Gallery, Kobe Arte Marche, Kobe, Japan
99 Years, Digital Art Week Asia, Tiong Bahru Air Raid Shelter, Singapore
2025 Recovering Time, 2nd Annual Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video Arts, Duolun Museum, Shanghai
Autumn Salon, AFA, Fundacão Oriente, Casa Garden, Macao
After Oriental Garden, Casa Garden, Macao International Art Biennial, Macao
Digital Archipelagos, Ping Shan Art Center, ShenZhen, China
2024 Journey to the West, Mono No Aware Screening, Museum of Modern Art, NY
28th Poets House Showcase, Books of the Pandemic (2020-2021), Poets House, NY
AI & Cross-Media Art, Putuo Art Center, Shanghai, China
Herstory, Art On Floor, Shanghai, China
2023 You Still Have Something of the Ghost About You, Sound Art Museum, Beijing, China
You Still Have Something of the Ghost About You, Emerging Curators Program, 14th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai, China
Whale Song, Shanghai Shipyards, T&Art Convention, Shanghai, China
2022 Coeur Bleu, Paris Design Week, Paris, France Dear America, SALT, New York University, NY
2020 In America, You Are Asked Why are Leaves Green, Immigrant Artist Biennial,
EFA Space & Brooklyn Museum, NY
In America, Why Leaves are Green?, Prague Indie Film Festival, Prague
In America, Why Leaves are Green?, Synergy Film Festival, Best Student Film, NY
2018 Outside Women* Cafe, Borders in a Single Shot, Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin, Germany
AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
2026 Studios at MASSMoCA, Residency
Noemi Book Award, Winner
Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Contest, Finalist
National Poetry Series, Finalist
Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, Finalist
2025 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Contest, Finalist
YesYes Books Open Call, Finalist
2024 Moving Image Diversity Fellow, Bard College MFA Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts
2023 100 Most Influential Chinese, Forbes China
Gold Ottocar, Autovision Film Awards, Munich, Winner
Society of Publishers in Asia Awards for Editorial Excellence, Winner
2022 Paris Review/92Y Discovery Prize, Semi-Finalist
2021 Best of the Net, Nominated by The Florida Review
BoAo International Poetry Festival, Best Emerging Poet
Samover Press, Best New Poets
Paris Review/92Y Discovery Prize, Runner-up
Lift-Off Global Network, Official Selection
The First Time Filmmaker Showcase, Official Selection
Prague International Indie Film Festival, Official Selection
Synergy Film Festival, Official Selection
2020 The George Bogin Memorial Prize, Poetry Society of America, Winner
Black Warrior Review, Pushcart Nomination
Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pushcart Nomination
The Cecil Hemley Memorial Prize, Poetry Society of America, Finalist
Own Voices Chapbook Prize, Radix Media, Winner
Poetry in the Pandemic, Tupelo Press, Honorable Mention
Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, Southern Humanities Review, Honorable Mention
Art of Future Imaginations Grant, New York University, Tisch School of Arts
Center for Book Arts, Fellow
Global Research Institute, Athens, Greece, Fellow
2019 NYU Screenwriting Production Lab, Fellow
Cosmonauts Avenue Nonfiction Prize, Shortlist,
2018 Lillian Vernon Fellowship, New York University, Poetry MFA
2017 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Fellow
5-College Curatorial Fellow, Flaherty Seminars
Disquiet International Literary Prize, Fiction short-list, Poetry short-list,
2016 Research Fellow, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
G. Armour Craig Award for Prose Composition, Amherst College
The Corbin Prize (runner-up), Amherst College
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
How Art Museum, Shanghai, China
BOOKS
Against This Earth, We Knock, Noemi Press (forthcoming Spring, 2028)
This Is My Testimony, Black Warrior Review, 2021
There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife, Radix Media, 2020
(Spanish translation forthcoming from Cicada Editora)
ANTHOLOGIES
Annual Review of China Contemporary Moving Image Art, Doland Museum, 2026
PARC: Sentiment and Intellect in ShanShui, 2025
On NFTs: A Collection of Essays and Artworks, Taschen, 2024
Best New Poets 2021, Samover Press, 2022
The Best of TQ: An Anthology of Multi-Disciplinary Texts in Conversation, Tupelo Press, 2023
Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, Lost Horse Press, 2017
PERFORMANCES
2025 "PingPong Diplomacy" Accent Sisters, NY
"What would you hear?" Butter Room, Macau
"There They Are" with Lisbon Poetry Orchestra, Dom Pedro Theater, Macau
2024 "I Promise to Get Up," Talking Dolls, Detroit, MI
2024 "I Promise to Get Up," Accent Society, New York, NY
2023 “108 Days” System, Shanghai
2021 "You Did Not Return," Performance, Powerlong Art Museum, Shanghai,
"You Did Not Return like You Said You Would," WestBund Art Museum, Shanghai
"You Did Not Return like You Said You Would," TRI SPACE, Shanghai
2020 "In America, Why Leaves are Green?" Bond Performance Festival, New York
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2023 "2064," Christopher Doyle, Ziwu, Shanghai ,China
2021 "Post-sinofuturism," Lawrence Lek, Ziwu, Shanghai, China
SELECT LECTURES
2026 Diasporic Springs, Museum of Chinese in America, NY, 1/31
Poetics of Ritual (workshop), Poets House, NY, 1/17
2025 The Blanc, NY
Lumina Light Festival, NY
Museum of Chinese in America, NY
LAkmA Gallery, NY
Macau Literary Festival, Macau, China
Literary Festival, Amherst College, MA
2024 New York Public Library, New York
College of New Jersey, Princeton, NJ
New York Poetry Festival, NY
Taipei Poetry Festival, Taiwan
Shanghai Biennial, Power Station of Art, China
2023 Edinburgh International Book Festival, Scotland
Ziwu, Shanghai, China
2021 Qinghai Literary Festival, China
Shanghai Music Academy, Shanghai, China
2020 Brooklyn Book Festival, NY
2018 Six Space Gallery, Hanoi, Vietnam
Harun Farocki Institut, Germany
EDUCATION
2026 MFA Moving Image, Bard College, NY
2020 MFA Poetry, New York University, NY
2017 BA, Amherst College, Amherst, MA
2015 Center for Medieval Studies, Oxford, UK