Biography

Jazsalyn is an Afro-Carolinian artist and technologist developing Ancestral Intelligence (2020-present) as a framework for alternative AI: our earliest forms of knowledge systems, philosophies, and traditions passed down through generations within indigenous and diasporic communities.

She experiments with video game engines to create emergent forms of video art. Working where speculative fiction and reality collide, she builds game environments and converts them into vast interactive landscapes to recover traces of ancestral data, memory, and heritage algorithms. Moving between digital and physical space, her work extends to installation, gameplay-as-performance, and long-term projects to explore cooperative futures for complex human-to-nonhuman knowledge systems.

In addition to teaching at Yale School of Art, she has written curricula on African and Diaspora rituals as speculative technology at The New School. She also organizes Black Beyond, an experimental, artist-led curatorial project where she curates exhibitions and experiences to define alternate realities for (b)lackness. Her work has been supported by The Whitney Museum of American Art, Serpentine Arts Technologies, Pioneer Works, New Museum’s NEW INC, Onassis ONX, MTA Arts & Design, Creative Time, and more. She has lectured at institutions including Harvard University and has been featured in publications such as Contemporary And, Cultured Magazine, and The New Yorker.


Works
Contact
Instagram

CV

Selected Exhibitions 

2026   Ancestral Intelligence Network: Echolocation, DEMO, NEW INC, New Museum, New York, NY 
2025   Data Fluencies: Rivulets, Boston Cyber Arts, Boston, MA
2025   Data Fluencies: Tributaries, Or Gallery, Canada
2025   Data Fluencies: Confluence, Living Arts Science Center, Lexington, KY
2023   Extended Realities, DEMO, NEW INC, New Museum at ONX Studio, New York, NY
2022   Life, The Universe, and Everything: Don’t Panic, 3hd Festival, Creamcake at soft power, Germany
2022   Xtensions, NEW INC, New Museum, Onassis ONX, New York, NY
2022   BLACK BEYOND_ASSEMBLY, ALCHEMY, ASCENSION [a^3], Kellen Gallery, New York, NY
2021    BLACK BEYOND_ORIGINS, New Art City
2021    Wheaton Biennial, _final_final_FINAL, Beard and Weil Gallery, MA
2020   Creative Code Art Festival, Black Gaze, Lightbox, New York, NY


Awards and Recognitions

2026   Creative Capital, State of the Art Prize
2024   Onassis ONX Member
2024   Fellow, BPMplus, Black Public Media
2023   Grantee, SEEK, Raleigh Arts
2022   Grantee, Next Web, NEW INC, Meta Open Arts
2022   Grantee, Explorer Award, Unfinished, Filecoin Foundation
2022   NEW INC, Extended Reality Cohort with EY Intelligent Realities Lab, New Museum
2021    NEW INC, Extended Reality Cohort, New Museum
2021    Grantee, Fiscal Sponsorship, New York Foundation of the Arts
2020   Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice Representative, Parsons School of Design
2019    Provost Merit Scholar, The New School, Parsons School of Design
2012    Grantee, Southern Designer, Belk Incorporated
2010    Pack Promise Scholar, North Carolina State University


Lectures, Panels and Symposia

2025    Ancestral Intelligence: Alternative AI, KIN Festival, Kinfolk Tech, New York, NY
2025    Ancestral Intelligence, Harvard x Design Conference, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
2024    Worldbuilding Untold Stories, Presented by Black Public Media, Game Devs of Color Expo, Online
2024    Natal Dimension, Creative Time, New York, NY

2023    Black Beyond Game Night, Creative Time, New York, NY     
2023    Extended Realities, DEMO, NEW INC, New Museum, New York, NY
2023    Today at Apple, Art Lab: Building Worlds and 3D Afro Artifacts, Apple, New York, NY
2023    Building Inclusive Design Cultures, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY 

2022    (alt) reality, Design and Technology, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY
2022    Afrofuturism in Black Panther: Gender, Identity, and the Re-Making of Blackness Panel, The New School, New York, NY 

2021    (alt) reality, Design and Technology, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY 
2021    Abolition Planning and Afrofuturism, Pratt Institute, New York, NY
2021    Wheaton Biennial, _final_final_FINAL, Beard and Weil Gallery, MA
2021    Art on the Ground, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY

2020   afro-nowism_soundscape rituals_ep III, Black Beyond, Navel Cultural Organization, CA
2020   afro-nowism_writing abolition futures_ep II, Black Beyond, Online
2020   Speculative Design for Safe Spaces, Processing Foundation, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY

2017    Future Thought, Textile as a Second Skin, Moogfest, Moog Music, NC
2017    PULSE, The Making Center, James B. Hunt Library, North Carolina State University, NC