AJA Louden (AJA sounds like ‘Ajay’, short for Adrian Joseph Alexander) is a muralist, designer and educator working out of Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Born to a family tree with roots split between Jamaica and Canada, Louden is a child of contrast. He grew up in a rural community near a big city, and alternated his time between skateboarding, drawing on things, and feeding goats and horses. Whether it’s his larger than life, detailed, freehand spray-painted portraits, or his work using hand lettering, style writing and sign painting to celebrate the beauty of language and the written word, AJA uses painting as a lens through which he may see more clearly, and as a tool to help others be seen.
"Looking up to the sky, we find ourselves in the stars. Black archetypes as constellations; beacons & symbols on a stellar roadmap through our stories. Being Black every day is being the authors of our own myths."- AJA Louden
