Ayo’s work consists of extensive research projects that shapeshift into film, sculpture and performance. The artist’s practice is based on a desire to seek out counter narratives, and to explore both pleasurable as well as uncomfortable ways of re-telling histories. Sources of inspiration sprout from archival materials, oral histories, intangible forms of cultural heritage and obscure feelings of displacement within the contemporary African Diaspora.
Background
Ayo is a Ugandan artist, researcher and filmmaker currently based in The Netherlands. Ayo holds an MA in Fine Art from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. In 2020 she was awarded the Willem De Kooning Master Research Award, and in 2021 she was nominated for the Guido Huysmans Young African Filmmaker Award. Recent exhibitions and film screenings include Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Singing Off Key (solo) at Singular Art Gallery, Nijmegen, Material Context at Het Archief, Rotterdam, and Possessed at the European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany.
Press play to listen to the song that is currently playing in AYO’s studio:
Instagram Website
Ayo – Pregnant Clouds Pissing Rain (2019)
Available works by Ayo
Cours Belsunce (2021)
Odero & The weeping totem (2021)
Modern Day Griots & tapped train conversations (2020)
Pregnant Clouds Pissing Rain (2019)
Abjects IV (2020)
