Combining text, abstraction, and sound, Ajalon creates layered works in which language is often fragmented, obscured, or dissolved. Her work spans exhibitions, performances, and publications, engaging with themes of displacement, gender, and the Black diasporic experience through an experimental,
process-driven approach.

Jamika Ajalon: My work is always a bit of a continuation of a sentence. I’m finishing my second novel, revising it. I’m working on a show at the Picasso Museum. I’m in the middle of trying to decide a set list, destroying that set list, starting again, giving myself challenges—learning new equipment, new mixer, new machine. I don’t know why I do that. I think I like to drive myself crazy.

I’ve got other shows coming up—anti-lectures in Berlin, sound work for dancers, performing with noise artists, a group exhibition/show at Raven Row called “Black Quantum Futurism.” That’s basically what I’m doing in terms of if I was to spew off a to-do list. It comes in waves: lots of things going on, then nothing going on.

This type of life is ups and downs. I feel like I’m at a pivotal point because things are starting to align more with where I am at this moment. It’s a freeing spot, but at the same time it’s scary. The thing about people who center their work around the marketplace is that once they find their niche, then you’re in a gilded cage. There’s no space to grow unless you just want to reproduce and replicate for the commodification machine. And it’s scary because if they like what you did in the past, that’s what they’re going to be expecting.

Mercedes Loyd: So, when you say when you find your niche you’re kind of locked in this cage, how do you … you’ve found a way to free yourself by doing so many things ...

JA: I’m a writer at base, always have been. But I think it’s a process, the more that you work the more you learn to trust your process. And if I’m completely honest, even if I’ve been doing my work for decades, sometimes it’s difficult to quiet that brain that says “you should be doing this, why are you not doing that? Do you even know what the fuck you’re doing?”

Part of the reason why I’m interdisciplinary is because I felt that the niches and the binaries are constraints that we made up. There are things I can’t express with words that can be expressed through visuals or sound. I felt an interconnection between those in terms of being a storyteller. It was a heartfelt calling, it also reflected a political and philosophical way of seeing and breaking those “boxes,” because everything becomes commodified it seems. But that was the initial thing and still is the initial thing—blurring the division between this, that, and the other, because it’s all coming from the same source. Being a poet, in my book, doesn’t necessarily mean that you write poetry.

ML: What’s your relationship with surveillance?

JA: I’m into disrupting these systems of reality that are force fed. Surveillance culture right now is intertwined with capitalism and it’s also a way of fixing us into place. And this fixity is just really a placeholder so we all believe “oh that’s just the way it is.” And that is what it is designed to do. Because there’s no way that one can control billions of people. It’s a thing of feeling always paranoid and scared, operation fear. However, it’s really scary because people are very connected to and invested into what these systems have forced them to do, and so it becomes self-defining. You become someone who is surveilling yourself and projecting that vision onto others.

ML: What’s your relationship with social media?

JA: There was a time in my life where I would be really hard on myself because I wasn’t very good at it … but a website is necessary, it’s necessary to have a place for people to look at your shit. Instagram is becoming more and more just a pain in my head because the algorithms are more and more commercial based and it’s not community based anymore.

It becomes comparison, seeing what other people are doing. What capitalism breeds is “oh, they’re doing that… and what am I doing? My shit is just as good as theirs, and why not?” And then you end up in a kind of cycle of depression that kills your creativity. So, I think it can be useful if you develop a healthy way of engaging, but it’s a trap. It’s kind of like when you’re addicted to drugs and you go “you know what, I’ll just binge drink on the weekends.” It’s a hard balance. It’s not sustainable. I use it as a tool, but not something that defines me.

ML: When working between different countries, how did you deal with that practically?

JA: There are a lot of things I probably could have taken more advantage of. But it is all about developing a sense of self-worth, what you’re worth. It’s such a sham anyway, it’s like, “I am worth monetarily…” I really don’t like that as a definer because then when you’re broke, that means you’re a piece of shit.

It’s been up and down financially. Sometimes I get enough money to travel comfortably and do the work comfortably, other times not. And I think it’s okay to just go for it, you know, and not make money the center. I mean, I’ve done some stuff that was not paid enough, because of who I’d be working with, or because of the challenge it might present me.

Now, I do grant writing all the time. I’m co-artistic Director at X Collective X and we work together to find funding. I also do it for myself, and I get about one out of a thousand. I’m exaggerating a little bit but it’s like playing the lottery. Researching who they are, who they funded in the past, but the most important thing is does it align with what I want to do?

The most tiring part is moving your equipment and setting it up. That can be such a drag, taking the train with your heavy bags. And as I’ve gotten older there are certain things I won’t do anymore because I want to work smarter and not so hard. You really have to take care of your nervous system and the source where that creative pulse comes from.

ML: Your work is so aligned with you, its raw, like a reflection of your actual self, but you’ve found a way to make everything work and do cool things in places with people.

JA: I’m honest to my own demise to a certain degree but sometimes I forget to look back, and when I look back, I’ve had the opportunity to do some really crazy, amazing shit. But sometimes it’s hard because I’m not internationally well known, with the stability and support that can give you. And even though I’ve had these things there’s always that forever emerging moment and you have to start creating your own ideas of what success means.

For me, the fact that I’ve been able to center my art for decades is an amazing thing. I think it’s important to take risks and do the shit that may not work. Often the failures and the mistakes are opportunities to learn. Sometimes they are the genius. Letting go to that is one of the biggest skills that one can learn as a person moving through this world, definitively as a creative.

Mercedes Loyd works and lives in Paris, and her artistic practice is based on drawing, painting, video, and installation. Grounded in sustained research and critical reading, her practice moves through material experimentation to trace how networks of authority take form and reproduce across scales.