JAMES JORDAN JOHNSON

1997, Born in London, UK

Current
2025 - 2026 New Contemporaries Studio Residency at FormaHQ, London (UK)
2025 - 2026 A Caribbean Yet to Come, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto, Puerto Rico (PR)
Residencies
2024 High House Residency, Norfolk, (UK)  
2020 Toynbee Studio’s, Arts Admin, London (UK) 
2018 The Rising, ]performance s p a c e[, Folkestone (UK) 
2018 The Courtauld Institute of Art, London (UK) 
Group Exhibitions/Performances/ Screenings
2025 James Jordan Johnson & Ma Pak Yin, House of Anneta, London (UK)
2025  James Jordan Johnson & Ma Pak Yin, Duets, ICA (UK)
2024 Dead Lef: Visions of Contemporary Jamaica Vol.2, Ritzy Cinema, London (UK) 
2023 Miles Greenberg, Water in a Heatwave, MIA Institute, Southbank Centre, London (UK) 
2022 Crate Space, People Dem Collective, Margate (UK) 
2022 Tiding, ]performance s p a c e[, Romney Marsh (UK) 
2021 A Decade of Performance Art in the UK, Folkestone (UK)
2021 Working Encounters, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck (AT) 
2019 Collective Intimacy, The Showroom x 180 The Strand, London (UK) 
Solo Exhibitions/Performances
2025 Fish Bone in Thumb, Cabinet Closed, London Performance Studios, London (UK)
2024 Something is Trying to Disappear Me, Diaspora Now, Humber St Gallery (UK) 
2023 Late at Tate Britain: Desire, Culture and History (UK) 
2023 In Response, Constellation of Multiple Wishes, Mosaic Rooms, London (UK) 
2023 Something is Trying to Disappear Me, Ugly Duck, London (UK) 
2023 Something is Trying to Disappear Me, Buzzcut Festival, Glasgow (UK) 
2021 Something is Trying to Disappear Me, Ark-T, Oxford (UK)
2021 Something is Trying to Disappear Me, Arts Admin, London (UK) 
2019 Heads Up, CLAY, Leeds (UK) 
2019 My Brother’s Keeper, Tempting Failure, Croydon (UK)
Commissions
2022 Working Encounters, Create to Connect Create to Impact (SRB) 
2021 In The Hour of Darkness, Estuary Festival, Essex (UK)
Media
2022 Joy Inside Our Tears, Harold Offeh and conversation with project contributors, Wellcome Collection (UK)
2021 Do You Remember The Floorboards? An online talk with Bri Williams (UK) 
2020 James Jordan Johnson in conversation with Róise Goan, Arts Admin, London (UK) 
2016 Lament, Performance, TEDx Talk, London (UK) 
Teaching, Talks & Workshops
2024 Mapping Movements and Personal Cartographies Workshop, Bow Arts (UK) 
2024 The Conch, South London Gallery (UK) 
2022 Artist Lecture, Margate Art School (UK) 
2021 Theatre Arts, Middlesex University, London (UK)
Education
2024 - 2025  MA Contemporary Art Practice, Royal College of Art (UK)
2021 - 2022 Open School East, Margate (UK)
Awards
2024 Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship, Royal College of Art, London (UK) 
2022 Venice Fellowship Programme, Venice Biennale (IT) 
2022 Metroland Cohort: Peer-To-Peer (UK) 
2021 Live Art Fund, Jerwood (shortlisted), (UK) 
2023 Donna Lynas Residency, Wysing Arts Centre (Shortlisted), (UK) 
2020 - 2021 Artist Bursary Scheme, Arts Admin, London (UK)

© James Jordan Johnson 

ABOUT





Fray Tongue, 
19minutes 33seconds 

Filmed in the summer of 2025 in Donnington, Lincolnshire. Fray Tongue takes its name from the dual etymology of the word fray. Fray meaning a fabric worn at its edges but is also used to infer when a male deer rubs its antlers on a tree to mark its territory. The film brings together a confluence of cultural, political and familial understandings and experiences of what constitutes the rural experience. Displaying landscapes through a slow passage of time that subtly infers migrant agricultural labour, mono cropping, syncretic belief systems and understanding many rural landscapes as sites of demarcation.