JinJin Xu is an inter-disciplinary artist and poet haunting the oceans between New York/ Shanghai/ Macau. Her docu-poetic practice interrogates mis/remembrance and self/erasure, bearing a poetics of witness to buried soundscapes, censored memories, and the geopolitical hauntings within our most intimate relationships. Documenting testimonies through linguistic and poetic interventions, JinJin spent years researching nüshu (women's script), a near-extinct language passed on by generations of women near her mother's hometown.
JinJin is the winner of the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award and her work has received honors from the Paris Review/92Y Discovery Prize, Southern Humanities Review, Tupelo Press, the Cecil Hemley Prize (Poetry Society of America), Best New Poets, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Flaherty Seminars, Global Research Institute (Athens), Prague Indie Film Festival, Munich Autovision Film Award, Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and two Pushcart nominations.
Her installations, films, and performances have exhibited at Butter Room, Macau (2025); How Art Museum, Shanghai (2024); 14th Shanghai Biennial (2023); Sound Art Museum, Beijing (2023); Paris Design Week (2022); The Immigrant Artist Biennial, New York (2020); Harun Farocki Institute, Berlin (2018), and she has been invited to literary festivals in Taipei, New York, Macau, Qinghai, Massachusetts, Edinburgh, and more. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Robb Report, Harper's Bazaar Art, The Art Newspaper, and Art China.
JinJin received her BA from Amherst College and traveled for a year across nine countries as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, recording docu-poems with women experiencing unusual forms of dislocation. She received her MFA in Poetry from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon fellow, and taught hybrid workshops through Tisch's Art of Future Imaginations Grant.
Her debut chapbook There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife was selected for the inaugural Own Voices Chapbook Prize (Radix Media, 2020), and was named by the New York Times as a must-read when visiting Shanghai. Her second chapbook, This Is My Testimony, interrogates language, otherness, and belonging within academia (Black Warrior Review, 2022).
Named by Forbes China as 100 Most Influential Chinese in 2023, JinJin is currently the Moving Image Diversity Fellow at Bard College, New York.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 What Would You Say If You Could?, Butter Room, Macau Cultural Fund, Macau
2024 Against This Earth, We Knock, How Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2023 108 Days, System, Shanghai, China
SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 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
2024 Moving Image Diversity Fellow, Bard College
2023 100 Most Influential Chinese, Forbes China
Winner, Gold Ottocar, Autovision Film Awards, Munich
Winner, Society of Publishers in Asia Awards for Editorial Excellence
2022 Semi-Finalist, Paris Review/92Y Discovery Prize
2021 Nomination, Best of the Net, The Florida Review
Best Emerging Poet, Boao International Poetry Festival
Best New Poets, Samover Press
Runner-up, Paris Review/92Y Discovery Prize
Official Selection, Lift-Off Global Network
Official Selection, The First Time Filmmaker Showcase
Official Selection, Prague International Indie Film Festival
Official Selection, Synergy Film Festival
2020 Pushcart Nomination, Black Warrior Review
Pushcart Nomination, Glass: A Journal of Poetry
Finalist, The Cecil Hemley Memorial Prize, Poetry Society of America
Winner, Own Voices Chapbook Prize, Radix Media
Honorable Mention, Poetry in the Pandemic, Tupelo Press
Honorable Mention, Auburn Witness Poetry Prize
Winner, The George Bogin Memorial Prize, Poetry Society of America
Art of Future Imaginations Grant, New York University, Tisch School of Arts
Fellow, Center for Book Arts
Fellow, Global Research Institute, Athens, Greece
2019 Fellow, NYU Screenwriting Production Lab
Shortlist, Cosmonauts Avenue Nonfiction Prize
2018 Lillian Vernon Fellowship, New York University, Poetry MFA
2017 Fellow, Thomas J. Watson Fellowship
5-College Curatorial Fellow, Flaherty Seminars
Fiction short-list, Poetry short-list, Disquiet International Literary Prize
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
PUBLICATIONS
2021 This Is My Testimony, Black Warrior Review
2020 There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife, Radix Coop
PERFORMANCES
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 & READINGS
2025 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