For over two decades, my voice lived through dance.

Now, my multidisciplinary practice moves through photography, video, text, textiles, sculpture, and healing forms that are all rooted in movement. Drawing on mythology, folklore, and Afro-futurist thought, I explore the severed Black psyche and the possibilities of repair. 

Since 2018 my series, Tar Baby Code, a body-based font reclaims the Black female figure’s expressive force through live performance, installation, sculpture, and video. My work bends time, turning body into text and resistance into a redemptive balm.

Ayo Janeen Jackson is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and educator whose career spans dance, film, entrepreneurship, and visual art. A graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, she performed internationally with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Ballet Preljocaj in France, and in the original Broadway cast of Julie Taymor’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. She is a Princess Grace Award recipient, NYFA Fellow, and UNCSA Artpreneur Award honoree.

After earning her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jackson expanded her practice to include movement-based research, photography, typography, and installation. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including the 2024 solo exhibition “Redemption! The Black Unicorn Wormhole”. In 2023 she completed her directorial film debut, Tear Suture Scab, and is currently collaborating with neurologists at Weill Cornell Medicine on research exploring movement, memory, and neuroplasticity.