AYOADE BALOGUN

  

imissyouwhereareyou, 2024

Multi-channel installation
animation and video, color, sound, charcoal and chalk on paper, cotton textile, branches, indigo dye

This work is a way for me to communicate my experiences of diaspora and reach for questions I’ve always had about ancestry and belonging as it relates to place and land. The piece itself is also documentation of a process of following my creative intuition in order to access bodily memory.

 In a diaspora experience that can be incredibly disorienting, this installation is a way for me to orient - an alternative map that connects a nebula of experience and roots it in grounding forces - indigo, earth, the four directions. The definition of ‘map’ that makes the most sense to me in this case is - ‘a way to find your way home.’

My concept of self is rooted in connection to land and lineage. I understand myself within an infinite series of ongoing cycles. This is a way of thinking of self that I am still developing, but that comes from the non-linear notions of time that are common in African and other non-western cosmologies.

The formal decisions I made in this piece partially revolve around connection to the indigo dyeing process. Using paper as a surface and earthen materials (chalk, charcoal) to draw, there is a material connection between my large drawings, the indigo dyed cloth, and the video work also featuring my hand-dyed indigo cloth - an artwork on its own. My use of large drawings was a way for me to channel that memory into a medium that required me to move. Using the repetition of symbols of circles and spirals, I wonder about cycles and returns. My process of creating the drawings was anchored in the four directions - in Yoruba, ariwa (north), gusu (south), ila oorun (east), iwo oorun (west).

The choice to make a spatial component to my work felt pretty natural - the way the original video with watercolor and indigo dye cloth came to be felt like a world I wanted to step into. What I’ve done is externalized a portion of self that is very internal, and done it in a way that allows me or any viewer to then step back inside of that self. The effect of this for me so far is being able to converse with myself in a more external way, ask questions of my work, and look for messages within it that may have appeared subconsciously.

check out a sample of one of the video channels, featuring animation, live video, and my hand-dyed indigo work below: