Ayo Akínwándé

Ayo Akínwándé is an artist, curator, and writer from Lagos, Nigeria.
With an academic background in architecture, his practice is multi-disciplinary, working across lens-based media, sculpture, installation, sound, and performance.

Akínwándé’s oeuvre is engineered towards a social critique of the built environment. He explores power dynamics, the relationship between the “powerful” and the “powerless,” as they manifest themselves in the multi-faceted layers of human reality.
He is interested in the flow of information in global democratic discourses, and how it reflects existing power structures. His ongoing project “Archiving the Future,” a long-term research work, involves collecting/archiving social media screenshots, and sound recordings of conversations at bus stops in the city of Lagos.
His long-term exhibition series “Power Show,” creates visual monologues and dialogues on socio-political realities in his society as he incorporates architectural processes in a spatial detailing and sectioning of his ideas and thoughts, to evoke both intimacy, and monumentality.

Akínwándé co-curated the 2017 Lagos Biennial, and was also a participating artist at the exhibition held at the Nigerian Railway Museum. In 2019, he presented solo exhibitions in Nigeria, Scotland, and Cuba for the 13th Bienal De La Habana.

He is a contributor to the book “Asiko: On the Future of Artistic and Curatorial Pedagogies in Africa” by the Centre for Contemporary Arts Lagos. His works/writings have been featured in Art Africa, Dienacht Magazine, Omenka Online, PoetsArtists, Contemporary&, The Sole Adventurer, Somethingweafricansgot, Art Momentum, and other journals and publications around the world.

Akínwándé is a recipient of the 2020 Edith-Russ-Haus Media Art Grant. The Fonderie Darling, Montréal, awarded him the 2019 Place Publique prize. He is a finalist for the 2018 ArtX and ABSA L’Atelier competitions.
Akínwándé has exhibited in solo, and group exhibitions across Africa, and beyond.