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Ayobola Kekere-Ekun in her studio, 2021
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Artist Statement
When I was a teenager, an image popped up in my mind. It was a recollection of my mother and me swimming when I was six years old. It was a calm afternoon, and my mother had just called to me to get out of the pool. It was about to rain. When I first remembered it, the image was so clear to me. I could smell the chlorine in the pool and hear the clatter of the beads in my hair as I turned my head. Moments later, I realised the memory was not real. I cannot swim and had never been in a pool. My mother developed a fear of water as a child after witnessing her friend drown. Neither my brother nor I were ever allowed near large bodies of water. And that was when I first recognised that I could not remember the bulk of my childhood. Over a decade later, I am ready to accept that I cannot access my memories due to unresolved traumas. This has inspired my attempt(s) to unravel the connections between the self and identity and how they interface with individual and collective memory.
I began a series of paintings attempting to reconstruct my childhood, real and imagined, drawing on old family photographs, conversations with family members, and pop culture references. I ground myself in the present by including fanciful and elaborate headgear, alluding to my recent body of work exploring gender equality and performative progress in Nigeria. I also attempt to maintain a grip on reality by inserting clocks into “memories” I find unlikely or inexplicably unsettling. In contrast, I rummage through the past by inserting and sometimes reimagining objects that either carry some form of meaning to me or would be readily recognisable to my peers.
In creating the paintings that make up this body of work, I toy with the most wholesome of ideas/experiences, childhood. Seemingly random and benign scenes of existence are shadowed by objects that become breadcrumbs of my attempts to understand my trauma and who or what I am beyond it. In grappling with the personal, I also examine the collective.
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Artworks
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ayobola Kekere-Ekun (b. 1993) is a contemporary visual artist. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her B.A. and M.A. in Visual arts were received from the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos; where she majored in Graphic Design. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Art and Design at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Ayobola is also a Lecturer at the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos.
Ayobola’s work often explores subjects connected to gender, mythology, power and the human condition in a multi-layered way; creating work through a labour-intensive process. Her work is heavily informed by personal experiences and observations. She is particularly interested in exploring the subtle interplay of time, space, gender, power and social structures in contemporary society.
Ayobola works predominantly with a technique known as quilling, in which strips of paper are individually shaped to create forms. She tends to quill with a variety of materials that respond well to the technique; including ribbon and strips of canvas. She constantly experiments with new ways of exploring materials and their capabilities. Ayobola views the intricacy of her work as a visual metaphor of the complexity of the subject matter she engages with.
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