Jarod Lew is an artist who draws on photography as a form that mediates the transmission of postmemory, grounded in intergenerational encounters with racial violence, diasporic loss, displacement, and alienation. Through this exploration, Lew contends with the performativity of race and its instability as a locus of meaning.
His project, Please Take Off Your Shoes was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2021, and was exhibited in a group exhibition at SFMOMA titled Kinship: Photography and Connection in 2023. His other project, In Between You and Your Shadow, examines his relationship with his mother, who was the fiancé of Vincent Chin--the subject of a hate-crime that brought national attention to matters of Asian American civil rights. His works are in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Kadist, San Francisco, Harvard Art Museum, University of Michigan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lew’s work has been written about in Aperture, Artforum, Elephant Magazine, and Aesthetica Magazine. Lew is currently an MFA candidate in photography at the Yale School of Art and will be graduating in 2024.
Lew is available for commissions and collaborations.
Education
2024 MFA, Yale University School of Art (expected)
2009 BFA, Michigan State University in Studio Art
Select Group Exhibition:
2023 The Armory Show- Aperture booth, New York, New York
2023 L’SPACE- Aperture Summer Pop-Up, New York, New York
2023 Yancey Richardson Gallery- Intimate Strangers, New York, New York
2023 SFMOMA- Kinship: Photography and Connection, San Francisco, California
2023 Orlando Art Museum- The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today, Orlando, Florida
2023 Reyes|Finn- Get Together, Detroit, Michigan
2022 Yale School of Art- First-Year MFA Exhibition Blanket Statement, New Haven, Connecticut
2022 Detroit Institute of Arts- Conscious Response: Photographers Changing The Way We See, Detroit, Michigan
2022 Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery- The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today, Washington D.C.
2021 The Design Museum of London- Electro from Kraftwerk to Daft Punk, London, United Kingdom
2019 Philharmonie de Paris - Cité de la musique- Electro from Kraftwerk to Daft Punk, Paris, France
2018 Center for Photography Woodstock- Photography Now 2018, Woodstock, New York
2018 Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina- The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
2018 Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art- The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today, Kansas City, Missouri
2017 Art Museum of South Texas- The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today, Corpus Christi, Texas
2017 Tacoma Art Museum- The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today, Tacoma, Washington
2016 Photoville 2016- PDN Container, Brooklyn, New York
2016 Detroit Institute of Arts- Facing Change: Documenting Detroit at the, Detroit, Michigan
2016 Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery- The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today, Washington D.C.
2014 Center for Fine Art Photography- Portraits 2014 with guest curator Amy Arbus, Fort Collins, Colorado
Awards/Portfolio Reviews:
2024 Yale University Sam Messer Scholarship
2023 Yale University Harvey Geiger Fellowship Fund
2022 Yale University Richard “Chip” Benson Endowed Scholarship
2021 Film Photo Award Visionary Project finalist
2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize 2021 shortlist
2019 Magenta Flash Forward Top 100 2019
2019 LensCulture Portrait Awards 2019 finalist
2018 CENTER 2018 Portfolio Review in Santa Fe New Mexico
2016 PDN Exposure Award 2016
2015 Rangefinder Storytellers Award 2015
Selected Press
2023 Cacao Magazine Interview
2023 Aesthetica Magazine- A Survey of Parenthood: Intimate Strangers
2023 SFMOMA- Artist to Artist: Jarod Lew and Reagan Louie in Conversation
2023 Aperture Foundation: The Possibility of Home
2023 Aperture Foundation: An Asian American Family’s Public History and Private Rituals
2023 WÜL Magazine: The Paradoxes Of Our Experiences
2022 IMU UR2 Panel: Art Activisms- Howie Chen Lecture
2022 Artforum: Sight Unseen
2022 Elephant Magazine: Family Fortunes: Meet the Photographers Reframing Domesticity
2022 Aperture Foundation: The Radiant Intimacy of Jarod Lew’s Family Portrait
2021 2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize
2021 Strange Fire Collective Q&A Interview
2021 Maake Magazine Interview
2021 Medium: Grieving Vincent Chin, 39 Years Later
2017 This Poignant Photo Series Reveals The Raw Reality of Detroit
Public Collections
Detroit Institute of Arts
Harvard Art Museum
Kadist, San Francisco
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
University of Michigan Museum of Art
Invited Talks
2023 Aperture- Staying In: Photographing the Asian American Home
2023 CAAMFest- Jarod Lew in Conversation with Helen Zia
2022 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
2022 Stanford University, Stanford, California
Clients
The Atavist Magazine
CNN
The Financial Times Weekend
GQ Magazine
Medium
Mens Health
Metropolis
National Geographic
NPR
The New York Times
The New Yorker
TIME Magazine
Pop Up Magazine
VICE
WIRED
Wall Street Journal
Yours Truly Creative