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Ayo Akingbade (Visual Arts, 2021)TowerXYZ4

Ayo Akingbade

Shortlisted in 2021 for Visual Arts

Ayo Akingbade is a London-based artist, writer and director whose work is built upon working-class identity and the female gaze. She works predominantly with moving image to reflect on the people who live within socio-economic constraints that make them “other”, linking them through recurring concerns on representations of the past, present and future.

Akingbade engages with the fluid boundaries between the self and the other by gathering local and cultural experiences in intimate and playful interpretations. The artist and her protagonists move through concrete, urban and institutional spaces, reflecting on the influence of the environment on a personal sense of place and identity – in particular the constantly shifting landscape of London.

The physicality of analogue film is often intrinsic to Akingbade’s filmmaking language, in which aesthetic and formal qualities are crucial to the development of narrative. She has exhibited and screened widely, including presentations at the ICA, South London Gallery, Birkbeck University, Walker Art Center, Somerset House Studios and Instituto Tomie Ohtake, amongst others.