
Another Eye
Another Eye: Ayo Akingbade
Screening and Q&A with Ayo Akingbade
Thursday, November 21, 2024
7 PM
Ayo Akingbade works predominantly with film and installation to address themes of power, urbanism, and stance. Her work has often documented experiences of rapid social change in London, where she was born and raised. Moving between experimental film essays, documentaries, and more traditional narratives, she grounds her practice in a commitment to hybrid storytelling. To this day, she has written, produced, and directed more than a dozen films of various lengths. This edition of Another Eye will present two of Akingbade’s works that each reflect her interests of the last few years while also indicating recent shifts and developments within her practice: Dear Babylon (2019) and The Fist (2022). The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the artist.
Dear Babylon (2019) concludes a trilogy of short films titled No News Today, which comments on the past, present, and future of social housing and the effects of urban redevelopment projects on the residents of London. Tower XYZ (2016) was shot on several housing estates in West and East London, primarily Trellick Tower, a Grade II-listed building designed by Ernő Goldfinger, while Street 66 (2018) focuses on the 1970s regeneration of the Angell Town Estate in Brixton, South London and pays homage to the late activist Dora Boatemah. The third and final film in the series, Dear Babylon, uses a combination of newly produced and archival material, blending fact and fiction: seeing the future of social housing threatened by the fictitious AC30 Housing Bill, a trio of art students decides to make a protest film. The scripted—yet highly realistic—narrative takes place on the Dorset Estate in Bethnal Green, East London, which was designed by Berthold Lubetkin in 1957. In addition to introducing Lubetkin’s reformist ideals, the 21-minute film includes documentary footage of street protests alongside interviews with local residents, the architects Elsie Owusu and John Allan, and the curator Meneesha Kellay. Shot in the neighboring boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, the film highlights the area’s rich history and discusses processes of gentrification, as well as people’s emotional and sociopolitical relation to home, community, and place.
While most of Akingbade’s works are set within the familiar territory of her hometown, London, some of her newer films take place in Nigeria, among them The Fist (2022). One of the artist’s most ambitious productions to date, the film is an intimate study of a Guinness brewery located in the Ikeja industrial estate outside of Lagos, Nigeria. Completed in 1962, the modernist-style factory was the first to be built outside of Ireland or the UK and opened only a couple of years after Nigeria’s independence from Britain. Guinness had been exported to the African continent since the 19th century, however, using colonial shipping routes around West Africa for distribution. The Fist follows a typical working day within the brewery, as a place where histories of colonialism, industrialization, and labor collide. Originally shot on 35 mm, the 24-minute film is composed of fixed, wide-angle shots atmospherically charged by a dense soundscape and the absence of conversation. Only in one scene, which shows a group of workers gathering in the morning, can voices be heard; in others, direct interpersonal communication is replaced by signs and slogans. The film’s main focus is thus not on these individuals and their specific tasks but on the machinery that they use and the facilities’ different spaces, which seem to serve as physical containers for particular responsibilities, mechanisms, and legacies.
Ayo Akingbade (*1994, London, UK) lives and works in London. She studied at the London College of Communication and the Royal Academy Schools. Her first major institutional solo exhibition, Show Me The World Mister, opened at Chisenhale Gallery, London in 2022 before touring venues like Spike Island, Bristol (2023), John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2023), the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2023/2024) and the Whitworth, University of Manchester (2024). Following this exhibition, Akingbade released her first publication, Show Me The World Mister, in 2023. Her work has been presented at numerous group shows and festivals, most recently at the Barbican Centre, London (2024) and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2024). Since mid-September of this year, Akingbade has been a fellow of the Borderland artist-in-residence program, run in cooperation with the Ludwig Forum Aachen. During her three-month stay, she’s looking into the history of Aachen’s thermal springs and water ecology, research she’s planning to use for a future script.
The event is a collaboration between the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf and the Ludwig Forum Aachen. Another Eye is funded by The Gingko Foundation.