Jesse McLean has dedicated her creative research and art practice to exploring what it is to be human in relation to what is not. Her films reveal the deep intimacies and connections formed through these relationships and contrast the finite capacities of the nonhuman with infinite human desires.

She has presented her work at museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide, including the CPH:DOX in Copenhagen; New York Film Festival, NY, NY; International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands; Venice Film Festival, Italy; Kassel Dokfest, Germany; Impakt Festival, Netherlands; First Look Festival, NY, NY; Imagine Science Film Festival, NY, NY; Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Switzerland; Yebizo Festival of Art + Alternative Visions, Tokyo, Japan;  EXiS, Seoul, S. Korea; Mumok in Vienna, Austria; and Green Gallery, Milwaukee. She was the recipient of an International Critics Prize, (FIPRESCI Prize) at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and a Jury Prize in the International Competition at the 2013 Videoex Festival in Switzerland. She was a featured artist at the 2014 Flaherty Seminar and a MacDowell Fellow in 2016. In 2016 she was selected for a Mary L. Nohl Individual Artist Fellowship and was a fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Film, Video, Animation and New Genres, within the Peck School of the Arts and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, one of the leading film programs devoted to supporting cinematic arts in the US.