Born and based in Brooklyn, NY, visual artist Jayden Ashley (b. 2002) investigates how institutional structures perpetuate systemic violence against Black communities. Merging conceptual sculpture with geographical and legislative research, his practice translates the reverberations of discriminatory policies into physical form. Ashley’s work references redlining sectors, zoning law, and social memory to explore themes of erasure, absence, borders, and invisibility. Concrete anchors his sculptural practice as a material that suppresses cultural resonance within neighborhoods through gentrification, and as a mechanism for economic and social restriction. Ashley examines the systemic mobilization of concrete to reinforce segregation and confine Black life. Through the emotional evocations of concrete, his work becomes a point of convergence between historical and contemporary systems of institutional violence.

 

Ashley has been an artist-in-residence at multiple programs in the United States and abroad, including Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT (2025), NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY (2025), Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY (2025), Foundation House in Greenwich, CT (2024), and Casa Belgrado in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2023). Notable group exhibitions include Region of Intensities, Frisson Gallery, New York, NY (2025), When Lullabies Become Walls, Deposit(o), Brooklyn, NY (2025), It would hurt us – were we awake – at NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY (2025), and Crossing Points at Galeria Azur, New York, NY (2024). Ashley is also a recipient of the NARS Foundation Residency Fellowship and the Colin Chase Fellowship Fund from the Vermont Studio Center.