Rising Stars: Meet Auen of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Auen.

Hi Auen, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’m Auen—a Black, queer, femme multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles. My creative journey started with music. As a teen, Girls Make Beats taught me DJing and production, giving me my first true language to articulate how I saw the world. Between 2017 and 2021, I immersed myself in songwriting, beat making, and audio storytelling—laying the groundwork for everything that followed.

Music led me to visual storytelling. In 2021, I joined Apple Creative Studios and co-founded Bedda Sound Productions, where I became Creative Director for Bedda Safe Place, a platform centering emerging artists. There, I discovered my love for film’s power to tell layered Black stories—but I’ll always be a musician at heart. Even as my work expands into photography, fashion, and filmmaking, sound remains my first love and the pulse of my art.
Soon after, I worked as a production assistant on Omwan’ekhui: An Experimental Film on Colorism. This project, focused on colorism in creative communities, allowed me to collaborate with a powerful team of artists and interrogate systems of beauty, privilege, and representation. That experience taught me how to use experimental film to ask difficult questions and engage viewers on emotional and intellectual levels.
In 2023, I served as Creative Director and Producer for Unrequited Love, a project under the Academy Promise Program. This opportunity allowed me to lead a creative team through pre-production, directing, editing, and post-production. It was a critical turning point—I began to fully embrace my ability to hold space for a story from start to finish and guide others in telling theirs. It affirmed my belief that visual media can be used to shape how communities are represented, remembered, and respected.
In 2024, I joined the Venice Arts Pre-Apprentice Digital Storytelling Program, where I created and directed my first solo short film, Shea Butter Anointing. The film follows the self-care rituals of a Black trans femme woman and is part of my creative universe, Infinity to Infinity, which explores the layered, often-overlooked lives of Black femmes. This body of work focuses on radical softness, care, and resistance. Through it, I explore Black femme identity beyond trauma—centering instead on imagination, rest, beauty, and love as forms of survival and joy.
My film journey has been one of radical collaboration. It began with Omwan’ekhui, where I worked alongside brilliant artists to confront colorism through experimental film—learning how imagery could challenge systems of power while creating space for healing.

In 2023, I stepped fully into my voice as a director with Unrequited Love through the Academy Promise Program. Leading a team from pre- to post-production, I discovered my ability to shepherd stories from concept to completion—and saw firsthand how film could reshape narratives about Black queer life.

That same year, I deepened my technical skills as a Video Production Assistant at Concord Music Publishing, where I trained in lighting, multicam editing, and set coordination. This hands-on experience gave me the confidence to launch IN THE EYE PRODUCTIONS—my freelance home for projects that celebrate community, from documenting Inglewood’s Black entrepreneurs to capturing the magic of LA Commons’ Mask Festival.

But my most personal work lives within Infinity to Infinity, my creative universe exploring the layered, often-overlooked lives of Black femmes. This body of work focuses on radical softness, care, and resistance. My 2024 short film Shea Butter Anointing – created through the Venice Arts Pre-Apprentice Digital Storytelling Program – follows the self-care rituals of a Black trans femme woman, centering imagination, rest, beauty, and love as forms of survival and joy.

Now I’m expanding this vision with Looking Crazy, a photo series within the Infinity to Infinity universe. Styled like a beauty campaign, it features Black women in natural “bedhead” hair and loungewear – looks society often deems unkempt. Through Kickstarter, we’re raising funds to take Looking Crazy on the road—starting with Los Angeles and next stop being Atlanta, where we’ll transform transit hubs and community spaces into galleries of radical authenticity. This work directly challenges white supremacist and patriarchal beauty norms, redefining what it means to be “presentable.” More than images, it’s an invitation to see Black women’s authenticity as beautiful.

In 2025, I launched The House of Rejoice, a fashion and lifestyle brand that blends Black American culture with modern design. For me, fashion is another narrative space—one where we can reimagine how Black identity is seen, celebrated, and expressed. My first collection, Black Herstory, is currently in production. It honors the names, legacies, and often-overlooked contributions of Black women throughout history. I’ve also been selling custom-designed journals on my website to raise funds for the collection. This creative entrepreneurship allows me to sustain my practice while continuing to center my values in everything I make.

My artistic vision is always rooted in community and liberation. I am committed to telling stories that reflect the richness, complexity, and humanity of Black lives—especially those at the margins. Whether I’m making a film, styling a shoot, composing music, or designing garments, I approach every project as a means to amplify truth, create space for joy, and build connections across generations.
I believe that art is not just a form of personal expression—it’s a tool for cultural memory, emotional healing, and social transformation. I create not only to be seen, but to make sure others are seen too. My work seeks to fill in the gaps in our collective memory, to question what is considered “normal” or “valuable,” and to imagine new futures rooted in care, equity, and possibility.

Looking forward, I plan to expand Infinity to Infinity into a larger transmedia project that includes short films, photography, fashion, and written essays—an evolving archive of Black femme experience and imagination. I want to continue building sustainable creative platforms that allow others to share their stories and reframe dominant narratives. And I hope to keep working at the intersection of art, activism, and healing, using every tool I have to make stories that matter.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Experiencing houselessness, poverty, and being raised by a single parent all came with inherent traumas—ones I wasn’t fully aware of until my early adult years. Then, adding the complex realities and intersectionalities of being Black, queer, and a woman came with its own set of societal prejudices.
As a result, I’ve had to heal inward and amplify the beauty and power in each of my identities. That journey began for me in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was locked in the house for days at a time and had no choice but to address everything—from my childhood to my teen years, to being in my 20s with no clear sight of the future. It was in that space that I broke down, cracked open, and revealed a dim light—but a light nonetheless. In those moments of reflection—through journaling, therapy, and discovering my own expression of spirituality—I shed the pain, and memories of joy returned. I remembered who that little girl wanted to be: a dancer, a singer, a poet, an actress, a traveler—free.

I went through a mid-life crisis at 20, but still consider myself a late bloomer. The setbacks didn’t just affect my artistic expression—they showed up in the way I love, the way I eat, the way I make decisions. All in a way to hide myself. And over the past five years, I’ve been doing the inner work to shine outward. That, I believe, is what my work now reflects.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
People are always surprised by how intuitive and insightful I am. I’ve gotten that comment since I was a child—an “old soul,” they would say, or “she’s been here before.” And maybe I have. One of my retirement plan options is to go back to school to become a psychotherapist. Currently, I’m a yoga instructor and get to help people connect with their full being—mind, spirit, and body. And for the time being, that’s very fulfilling.
I’m also very knowledgeable about food, which people are surprised about too. When I finally got a chance to watch cable TV, I watched the Food Network relentlessly. I even kept a notebook of recipes I wanted to try when we finally got our own home, and restaurants I dreamed of visiting.

I’m just a human who wants to express themselves, man—an expressionist, through and through.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/INTHEEYEPRODUCTIONS
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/au3n.mp4/
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jada-r-07461811a

Image Credits
“Looking Crazy” Los Angeles 2024- Photographed by Natasha P. Bradley

Behind the scenes Shot of “Shea Butter Anointing” 2024 – Photographed by Jayon Pierre Randolph