Ayo's practice en-livens unofficial and official archives. She migrated from Uganda to the Netherlands in her youth; carrying personal and collective histories about her homeland. These recollections are fertile ground for creating plural narratives in conversation with the current cultural contexts she inhabits. With personal engagements of bodies as archives, she studies oral records, intangible forms of cultural heritage, and craft practices among other sources, hoping to honor those who came before her.
Winnow(er) - Handwoven sculpture made from Opobo bark, Itele reed, concrete, ink.
Exhibition view, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2023-2024
Winnow(er) - is the outcome of Ayo's quest to learn the craft of weaving winning fans in the style of Langi people living in northern Uganda—the objects are known as Odero (“Langi winnowers”) in the artist's mother tongue. Presenting the fans as sculptural objects that were inspired by a Langi winner inherited by the artist herself, the project investigates embodied knowledge about personal and collective histories etched deep within diasporic bodies. The center of gravity for this project lies in the expansion of Ayo's practice towards informal knowledge production and inmaterial cultural heritage. Conceptually, Winnow(er) represents the forces manifested through the multiplicity of energies and purposes that can be contained within this object. Winnowers are not only used in agriculture, but also in ceremonies such as Dwoko Atin Awobi lot, a child-cleansing practice and rite of passage that UNESCO recognized in 2013 as intangible cultural heritage. Ayo's engagement with her diasporic experience—using Dutch materials while engaging with Ugandan techniques and heritage—imbues Winnow(er) with trans-historical and trans- geographical significance. Exhibition view, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
That which chases away sorrow I, III, III - is a series of mouth-blown and hand-fabricated glass sculptures. This project started as a personal query about the origins and symbolism of the Nepenthes plant. Inspired by 19th-century Botanical publications held in the Linnean Society of London archive, the form of Nepenthes, through my sculptural experimentation and imagination became vessels dousing pain and bringing protection during migration.
An invitation for liveness - is a meta-sensorial performance lecture weaving moving image, text, sculpture, and scent. It aims to experimentally “enlive” archival materials–and im-materials–related to African immigrant Oral Histories I engaged with during my Studio and Research residency.
She asked me, “Why did you come if you’ll leave again?” - Between 2019 and 2022, Ayo repetitively cast her inherited winning fan in concrete to evoke the memory of home and her landscape. These reproductions were exhibited during the group show, "A Door A Jar Singing" at Shimmer Rotterdam, the Netherlands. A Door Ajar, Singing featured 6 artists whose artworks connected to entrances and exits in the broadest sense including Alexandra Phillips, Lee Kit, Ayo, Melvin Moti, Jo-ey Tang, and Charlotte Posenenske.
Singing Off Key - 'Singing Off Key' is a video installation exploring the complexity of displacement across time and locality. In vignettes, the film weaves disjointed desires of belonging shaped by memory, sound, image, voices, and the metaphoric act of winnowing grain from chaff.
Vulgar Vagabonds - Clay, epoxy resin, pigment
Solo presentation, Unfair Amsterdam 2022
