Oluwatobiloba 🧿

My video installation “The Constant Is Flux” is on view at Galerie Zato, Cotonou, until 31 January. In physics, matter is described by vibration, by energetic states in flux. In this installation, I’m interested in culture as dynamic, mutable, and constantly in motion. Ojú-Inu (inner eye), a single-channel-video-collage that invites us to see beyond the visible, is centred within the installation. Within the video, a Ghana-Must-Go-Bag, a symbol of movement and migration, is activated as a sacred object, interwoven with archival colonial material. The work considers how spiritual practices adapt, mutate, and endure across time and space, and how meaning is continually reshaped by context. Since space-time itself is a continuum, the constant is flux. This work is an ode to the power of vibration. Scenography: Denzel Amoah @dddenzellll Sound Engineering: Valdo Idael With many thanks to the curator, Chéria Essieke Bayer @cheriabyrr @new.afro.na for the invitation to present this work 📸 @hitchoflife

Installation view of Dear Black Child at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art @smithsonian_africanart This presentation marks one spatial iteration within an evolving moving-image and installation practice, attentive to how cinematic language might be reconfigured through space and encounter. I’m grateful for the opportunity to think through the work at this scale, and for the conversations it continues to invite across institutional contexts. Photos by Brad Simpson

I am at once humbled and overjoyed to share that Í have been awarded the 2025 Aesthetica Art Prize for my work, Danse Macabre 😳 Knowing some of the other shortlisted artists whose practices Í greatly admire, this definitely feels quite surreal. The exhibition of all of our works is on show at York Gallery until January 2026, so please do check it out if you get a chance to visit! ————— Chapeau and huge congratulations to the marvellous team with whom í collaborated to bring this vision to life. Thank you for your amazing input: @4stringsz @nicwassell @ifebusola_s @bastenbona @sarf_bort Wenceslas Chabi Biaou Gildas Adannou, and the entire production crew To Adebayo Adetona and Alimo Issoufou for trusting me with your sacred family legacy And with much gratitude to those who backed and believed in this project: @202byartsplit @film_london @legacyartfoundation @enitpine 🙏🏿

self-portrait, test +1

“Our joy cannot be spoilt; love is the answer” (2026) Julien & Déni. Bouche du Roy, Grand Popo

In “Dear Black Child” the forest serves as a site of refuge and healing, fertile for the proliferation of joy. Through placemaking in Grand Popo, I continue to explore the necessary material conditions that facilitate experiences of embodied tenderness. @findingetherea experiments with these material conditions, through a focus on rest and collective care rooted in nature - mirroring thinking found in Quilombismo and maroon communities. How do you find joy in fugitivity? @yadichinma in Grand Popo

Through portraiture, I continue to explore the thematic threads of joy and interiority in “Dear Black Child”, capturing moments of radical tenderness. In acknowledging the invasive and all pervasive violence of anti-blackness, and how it instigates corporeal tension, placing limits on how the body can be and act; this portrait series invites play, softness, and vulnerability as revolutionary gestures of freedom - as a rejection of any “organising apparatus for one’s subjectivity” - Emi Koyama. “Once Upon a Cosmic Dream” (2026). Fanick at @findingetherea

Danse Macabre (2023) will screen at the Eye Filmmuseum as part of Cinedans Festival on Thursday 27 March. Emerging from an ongoing exploration of embodied consciousness, the film synthesises Yoruba metaphysics, analytical psychology, and dance, as the body becomes both witness and site of transformation. 📸: @ifebusola_s

This week’s GIDA City Guide destination is Grand Popo Benin and we are being led by artist and director Tobi Onabolu (@tobionabolu )! 🇧🇯🌴✨ Grand Popo has been Tobi’s home and conceptual lab over the last four years where he has produced films, launched and artist retreat (@findingetherea ), and where he organising the annual Grand Popo Art Festival (@lopolopo_gp ). We begin our tour at the iconic German bridge built in the 1950 before hitting Gildas at Lion Bar for the “highest vibrations in town” and settling at The Bouche du Roi - a magical place where the Atlantic Ocean meets the River Mono 🐚🌞 What hidden spots in Grand Popo would you add to this list? Share your favourites in the comments!

A still from ‘Dear Black Child’, now on view as part of Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (@smithsonian_africanart ) curated by Serubiri Moses (serubiri) & Kevin Dumouchelle (@kddumouchelle ) The film meditates on breath and becoming, reclaiming the divinity of the forest as a site where what no longer serves can be released… a space in which we might attune to the restorative force of joy. Moving between interior and exterior worlds, the work considers joy as both a personal and collective act: something felt in the body, and imagined beyond it. This single-channel film marks one iteration within a growing moving-image and installation practice. More to follow.

“Howlihoué : pour ce(ux) qui reste(nt)”
by @nu.melissandre.varin in collaboration with @djvbi For years, I had been visualising a performance at the Bouche du Roy, this charged and liminal site where the Atlantic Ocean meets the River Mono. In my first foray as Executive Producer, I brought n:u and DJABI together, offering the site as a playground for experimentation, while supporting the work across its conceptual, curatorial, and financial development. Six months later, something rare unfolded and I found myself brought to uncontrollable tears. @n.u.melissandre.varin and @djvbi , thank you for your brilliance, trust, and openness. More to follow. 📸 @hitchoflife

More than a week has passed since the opening week of the second edition of Lọpọ Lọpọ, and I’m still carrying what unfolded. The festival was founded as an intervention, responding to the eroding boundary between urban centres and under-touched rural spaces along the West African coast. After four years of living in Grand Popo, I’ve found myself living inside the tension between “welcomed development” and the growing fragility of our collective mental, social, and spiritual health. Lopọ Lọpọ is an attempt to be present with that reality, rather than resolve it. I’m deeply grateful to the artists who trusted me with their work - often presented in unorthodox contexts - who showed up with openness, generosity, and care. Although what stays with me most isn’t the calibre of the work, but the sense of community that formed, with people gathering from across Benin, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America. Thank you to the team, collaborators, partners, and everyone who poured themselves into this chapter. This was felt — collectively. @lopolopo_gp 📸 @hitchoflife