The SXSW American Born Chinese Premiere is celebrated with a gorgeous new poster from multidisciplinary visual artist, James Jean!
Last week as South by South West (SXSW), Disney premiered their upcoming genre-hopping television series, American Born Chinese! The premiere happened hot off the heels of the historic Academy Award wins by series’ stars Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan. Fellow cast members Ben Wang, Daniel Wu, Chin Han, and Sydney Taylor, and executive producers Kelvin Yu, Gene Luen Yang, and Melvin Mar, all celebrating their fellow cast members’ historic night, attended the SXSW Premiere where they also debuted a gorgeous new poster for the series by artist James Jean.
Jean is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose works explore imagination and reality through narrative-driven, layered compositions. His expressionistic, painterly approach to mark-making blends figuration with abstraction in works that are at once technically precise and gestural. He works primarily in painting and drawing while also embracing other media, including sculpture, installation and video.”
Jean’s new design captures Jin on his way to school, with Chinese mythological hero The Monkey King shape-shifting into his backpack. While the backpack alludes to the idea of cultural and emotional baggage, the flora emerging from within is a pastiche of the paintings of Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian missionary who became a court painter in China during the Qing dynasty and revolutionized traditional silk scroll painting by combining Western rendering techniques with traditional Chinese aesthetics.
”While watching ‘American Born Chinese,’ my ears burned and I squirmed in my seat because Jin’s journey felt so hauntingly familiar,” Jean said. “It was the pain of recognition: the ill-fitting clothes, the feeling of being on the outside, the percussive sound of parents arguing through the walls in a language not fully grasped. I had never seen my own experience of adolescence depicted on screen like this before.”
James Jean is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose works explore imagination and reality through narrative-driven, layered compositions. His expressionistic, painterly approach to mark-making blends figuration with abstraction in works that are at once technically precise and gestural. He works primarily in painting and drawing while also embracing other media, including sculpture, installation and video. Fusing aspects of history, tradition, literature, nature and personal experience, Jean’s dream-like, and at times disorienting, visual vocabulary draws upon art historical antecedents ranging from Baroque paintings to Japanese woodblock prints and Chinese silk scroll paintings.
via Official Disney+ Press Release
American Born Chinese Series Premiere Date
Also, the series now has an official release date! American Born Chinese is set to premiere on May 24, 2023. on Disney+. Until then fans can read Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel for free with Kindle Unlimited.
ABOUT AMERICAN BORN CHINESE
Based on the graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang Release Date: May 24, 2023, on Disney+ Showrunner: Kevlin Yu Director: Destin Daniel Cretton Executive Producers: Kelvin Yu (“Bob’s Burgers,” “Central Park”), Destin Daniel Cretton (Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Short Term 12”), Melvin Mar and Jake Kasdan (both of “Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.” for Disney+, “Fresh Off the Boat” and “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” and “Jumanji: The Next Level” feature films), Erin O’Malley (“Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.”), Asher Goldstein (“Short Term 12,” “Just Mercy”) and Gene Luen Yang
Cast: Michelle Yeoh as “Guanyin,” Ben Wang as ”Jin Wang,” Yeo Yann Yann as “Christine Wang,” Chin Han as “Simon Wang,” Daniel Wu as “Sun Wukong,” Ke Huy Quan as “Freddy Wong,” Jim Liu as “Wei-Chen” and Sydney Taylor as “Amelia”
Description: Based on the graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, “American Born Chinese” tells the story of Jin Wang, an average teenager juggling his high school social life with his home life. When he meets a new foreign student on the first day of the school year, even more worlds collide as Jin is unwittingly entangled in a battle of Chinese mythological gods. The genre-hopping action-comedy explores identity, culture, and family.
Are you excited about American Born Chinese? How incredible is James Jean’s poster? Why is May so far away? Let us know your thoughts and reactions to the first-look images and the series on social media!
Professional Nerd | Amateur Human | Creative/Content Director
The best way to describe Kevin Fenix is the kid you never tell what the buttons do in video games so you have a chance to win. Being 6’ 4” and Asian, he never really fit in, so he got comfortable standing out. Not only is it easy to find him in crowds, he dabbles in the culinary arts, does a little stand up and improv, and can honestly say Spider-Man is the Jesus-like influence of his life. Kevin Fenix loves dogs, movies, television, comics, comedy, and to shoot people… with video.
