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SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Sustaining the Otherwise: Practising Freedom and Refusal, Metro54
With Masimba Hwati, Christian Nyampeta, Adeju Thompson and Helena Uambembe.
Curated by Selene Wendt and Amal Alhaag.
2026
Curated by Selene Wendt and Amal Alhaag.
2026
Traces We Keep, Brutus
Curated by Yannik Güldner and Jeanette Bischops
2025
2025
SPARKS
Lofoten International Arts Festival (LIAF), Norway.
Curated by Kjersti Solbakken
2024
Curated by Kjersti Solbakken
2024
She asked me, "Why did you come if you'll leave again?"
Shimmer Rotterdam, 2022
Between 2019 and 2022, Ayo repetitively cast her inherited winnowing fan in concrete to evoke the memory of home and her landscape.
Two of these ten casts were exhibited during the group show, A Door A Jar, Singing at Shimmer.
" A Door Ajar, Singing is an expanded group exhibition featuring 6 artists whose artworks connect to entrances and exits in the broadest sense. Joining us over the following months are (in order of appearance) Alexandra Phillips, Lee Kit, Ayo, Melvin Moti, Jo-ey Tang, and Charlotte Posenenske.
We are inspired by the power of artmaking and curating. How it enables us to enter into an encounter, make an individual decision collectively, and when to exit. Exits are just as crucial as entries, as it gives space for someone else to enter and then move on. A Door Ajar, Singing celebrates the deeply connected materiality that communicates over thresholds through different physicalities and temporalities. We hover at the door left ajar, be uplifted by the autumn leaf, replay the voice message, cast ourselves over and over again in material, attend to a memory of land and country, and meditate through repetitive action. We find ways to connect. We let go. Come back. Back and forth. To and fro. Exhale. Sing. Always singing."
Exhibition text written by Shimmer
Documentation: Jhoeko
Between 2019 and 2022, Ayo repetitively cast her inherited winnowing fan in concrete to evoke the memory of home and her landscape.
Two of these ten casts were exhibited during the group show, A Door A Jar, Singing at Shimmer.
" A Door Ajar, Singing is an expanded group exhibition featuring 6 artists whose artworks connect to entrances and exits in the broadest sense. Joining us over the following months are (in order of appearance) Alexandra Phillips, Lee Kit, Ayo, Melvin Moti, Jo-ey Tang, and Charlotte Posenenske.
We are inspired by the power of artmaking and curating. How it enables us to enter into an encounter, make an individual decision collectively, and when to exit. Exits are just as crucial as entries, as it gives space for someone else to enter and then move on. A Door Ajar, Singing celebrates the deeply connected materiality that communicates over thresholds through different physicalities and temporalities. We hover at the door left ajar, be uplifted by the autumn leaf, replay the voice message, cast ourselves over and over again in material, attend to a memory of land and country, and meditate through repetitive action. We find ways to connect. We let go. Come back. Back and forth. To and fro. Exhale. Sing. Always singing."
Exhibition text written by Shimmer
Documentation: Jhoeko
Singing Off Key
Unfair 2022
Ayo moved from Uganda to the Netherlands several years ago. The distance she experiences between memories of childhood in Uganda and the life she leads as an adult in the Netherlands was the starting point for this mixed media installation.
The video in the installation, Singing Off Key explores in poetic fragments different experiences of individuals who are part of the African diaspora. The video begins with the image of a woman with a winnower, an object used to separate chaff from wheat. For Ayo, this shuffling, accompanied by a rhythmic sound, is a metaphor for the shuffling she herself experiences as a migrant. Part of herself she left behind in Uganda, and another part is in the Netherlands. In the film, members of the African diaspora in Uganda, the Netherlands and France share unique experiences of belonging and displacement. Ayo made the sculptures, paintings, photographs and text during filmic research. None has a hierarchy over the other.
Text - Sarah Van Binsbergen, Prospects catalogue 2023
Ayo moved from Uganda to the Netherlands several years ago. The distance she experiences between memories of childhood in Uganda and the life she leads as an adult in the Netherlands was the starting point for this mixed media installation.
The video in the installation, Singing Off Key explores in poetic fragments different experiences of individuals who are part of the African diaspora. The video begins with the image of a woman with a winnower, an object used to separate chaff from wheat. For Ayo, this shuffling, accompanied by a rhythmic sound, is a metaphor for the shuffling she herself experiences as a migrant. Part of herself she left behind in Uganda, and another part is in the Netherlands. In the film, members of the African diaspora in Uganda, the Netherlands and France share unique experiences of belonging and displacement. Ayo made the sculptures, paintings, photographs and text during filmic research. None has a hierarchy over the other.
Text - Sarah Van Binsbergen, Prospects catalogue 2023
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