Of Chinese and Ecuadorian descent, Marisa Morán Jahn is an artist, multimedia designer, educator, and the founder of Studio REV-, a nonprofit organization whose public art projects and tools impact the lives of low-wage workers, immigrants, women, and youth.
Jahn originated El Bibliobandido(or ‘story thief’), an ongoing living legend built around a masked bandit who, ravenous for stories, roves the jungles of Northern Honduras — a region with an 80% illiteracy rate — 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; and a public art nanny hotline (think NPR’s car talk but for nannies) about the New York State’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights; The NannyVan, a bright orange mobile design lab and sound studio that “accelerates the movement for domestic workers’ rights nationwide”; and the CareForce, a public art transmedia project and mobile studio (the CareForce One) exploring one of America’s fastest growing workforces — caretakers.
She is the recipient of awards from Creative Capital, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts amongst others. She teaches at MIT and The New School.