Marisa Morán Jahn: Art and Micropublics

Abstract

In this presentation, artist Marisa Morán Jahn shares how she creates artwork to engage different micropublics, yielding surprising and imaginative outcomes. In 2008, she embarked on creating the artwork / literacy movement Bibliobandido (in English, ‘story eater’) with a community in rural Honduras. This project centers around the eponymous character, in “a bandit who eats” stories, whose fame rivals Santa Claus. As a living legend still active today without Jahn’s involvement, Bibliobandido has transformed the lives of 20,000 young believers in Central and North America.

For another civic-scale artwork called CareForce (2010–ongoing), Jahn collaborated with the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) to create a participatory artwork including two mobile studios (NannyVan, CareForce One) and a PBS and Sundance-supported film that amplifies care workers’ voices. Strategic advocacy, infused with Jahn’s joyful creative energy, has bolstered the movement for domestic workers’ rights, including new laws in 10 states and a federal bill underway. NDWA cofounder and MacArthur genius Ai-jen Poo writes, “CareForce harnesses the catalytic power of art, architecture, and storytelling to dream bigger, dream futures into being that we’ve never experienced and create new protagonists.” In 2020, CareForce informed the creation of Carehaus. This artwork is also the US’s first care-based co-housing building, designed by architect Rafi Segal, and is currently in the permitting phase. Currently, Jahn and Segal’s HOOPcycle (think MesoAmerican basketball meets tricycle), commissioned by Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum, invites basketball fans, public housing residents, and pedestrians to explore the evolving design of sports and our agency to create new rules of the game.

Biography

Marisa Morán

Marisa Morán Jahn is an artist of Ecuadorian/Chinese descent whose work “exemplifies the possibilities of art as social practice” (ArtForum) and explores “civic spaces and the radical art of play” (Chicago Tribune). Working across medium and scale, Jahn directly engages new immigrant families and low-wage workers — and millions more via Tribeca Film Festival, The United Nations, Obama’s White House, Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Guggenheim Museum, international media (The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Univision, Forbes, BBC, CNN, Fader). Jahn has received awards from Sundance, Creative Capital, Anonymous Was a Woman, and The Joyce Foundation. She is a Senior Researcher at MIT (her alma mater) and the Director of Integrated Design at Parsons/The New School. With architect and MIT professor Rafi Segal, she coauthored Design and Solidarity (Columbia University Press); cofounded Carehaus, the US’s first care-based co-housing project; cocreated the HOOPcycle (think MesoAmerican basketball meets tricycle), and collaborates on various architectural/urban-scale projects. Sapar Contemporary represents her.