Jes [she/they] is an interdisciplinary designer and performance artist trained in architecture. She makes masks (often slightly uncomfortable) and dances in them (often in public places). A practice that allows her to meet her body and breath as collaborators in the world. Jes makes these masks in her studio in Vancouver Chinatown, on the unceded and ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations.
Jes is of mixed Czech-Cantonese-Vietnamese heritage, a student and board member with Vancouver Cantonese Opera, the Editorial Co-Lead at Chinatown Today, and an intern architect with the Architectural Institute of British Columbia (AIBC).
The fields and theories that influence her work include trauma-informed design, living heritage, anarchism, ornamentalism, somatic movement, critical studies, and feminist new materialism. Her artistic practice circles identity and embodiment through their racialized, gendered, and artificial edges: the fuzzy space between subject/object, ornament/human, and body/image. Her work has recently been shown at Vancouver Central Library & Granville Island as part of All Over the Map by New Works Dance [2026], Luna Arts Festival [2025], Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space [2022], Design at Riverside Gallery [2022], the Art Gallery of Mississauga [2022], Stackt Market [2021], and the Art Gallery of Peterborough [2020].