Jordan Zayas Kelly
JORDAN ZAYAS KELLY (b. 1997 Baltimore, US) is an interdisciplinary artist working between New York and London. Her practice spans experimental video, sculpture, sound installation, and prose, exploring the intersections of identity, material history, and archival memory.
Through tactile engagements with archive and embodied experience, she transforms materials into a method of reclaiming histories that resist traditional documentation. Her current work employs historically exploited materials such as sugar, denim, raw cotton, and steel, reimagining these elements as aesthetic interventions that interrogate their extractive origins.
Grounded in Visual Art and African American and African Diaspora Studies, Kelly’s practice reframes traditions often rendered invisible by institutional narratives, drawing attention to the quotidian gestures that refuse conventional modes of representation. Her work recalls the personal with the understanding that what is personal is inherently political.
Jordan Zayas Kelly lives and works in London, UK. She earned a BA in African American and African Diaspora Studies and Visual Art from Columbia University in 2022, and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London, UK in 2025. She is a recipient of the Gilbert Bayes Trust Award (Royal College of Art, 2025) and the Barbara and Carl Zydney Grant for Artists with Disabilities (NYFA, 2021). Her work has been featured in group exhibitions internationally, including in Los Angeles, London, and New York, with presentations at London Fashion Week. Her work has also appeared in publications such as Vogue, Office Magazine, and Flash Art.