name: itunu

location: WSA

host: NEW INC, DEMO2024

budget: $1,200

year: 2024

a capstone of sorts to the new museum’s incubator program NEW INC, DEMO2024 was a festival of showcases and presentations from the cohort. i took part in the showcase for my track, social architecture, to present the very first prototype of an ambitious audio-spatial installation i am developing. the ultimate form of the installation will serve as the launch of my spatial design studio, which will focus on embedding marginalized narratives into the built environment through spatial design and art. project label text is below:

Itunu, 2024
Ngozi Olojede 
b. 1995, Syracuse, NY. Based in Brooklyn, NY

Dimensions variable
Muslin textile, indigo dye, sound

Courtesy of the artist

Itunu is the Yoruba word for comfort. In a time where there is much to mourn in the world, Olojede explores her own personal grief as well as the shared need to hold one another in a space of warmth. A large hanging muslin uses the traditional West African process of indigo dye to create patterns of various textiles from cultures which have or are currently undergoing genocide, such as Palestine, Congo, and Haiti. Underneath, we find ourselves immersed within a soundscape that pays homage to water, a substance that we are made up of and that in which sound moves most efficiently through. In the artist’s search for comfort, she draws on African and diasporic principles of spirituality and community and reflects not only on the interconnectedness of oppressive struggles but how these struggles are also intrinsically tied to our relationship to the land, air, and ocean.

credits:

spatial design & creative direction: ngozi olojede

song & performance: reincarnate by ivy sole

sound designer: țaüs jafar

textile artist & producer: oluwakemi oritsejafor

curator: jessica kwok

producer: free trip (worthless studios)

press images by Dario Lasagni & Isaiah Winters