Jes Fan is deeply invested in object-making, with a particular investment in glass as a transformative material. Fan has been suspending melanin in glass globules that act as imaginary organs, intimately scaled to the body. It grants the melanin a life of its own, leaving us to deliberate how tangible this simple pigment is and what an outsized role in racial identity—and thus racial construction, colorism, and racism—it accommodates. One of the most pertinent questions in Fan’s work is the possibility of kinship outside biology, which was explored in a previous project Mother is a Woman (2018), a custom beauty cream infused with estrogen from the artist’s mother’s urine. With this cream, Fan asks if femininity and maternalism is communicable through a commercial product. Fan is a recipient of many awards such as the Jerome Hill Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and the New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship.

Fan is the subject of an Art21 “New York Close Up” film, “Jes Fan: Infectious Beauty.” The full film, showing the artist in his Smack Mellon studio, is available to watch here.