Rohan Ayinde is an interdisciplinary poet based in London and often working in Chicago. His work is centred around creating "otherwise" potentials (Ashon Crawley), and in so doing breaking down and simultaneously reconfiguring the ideological architectures that shape our daily and generational lives. The landscapes his work explores are formed through the lens of a black radical tradition committed to imagining freedom as a horizon of possibility. They are an archive of the journey there; maps under continuous construction; refusals to acquiesce to the dominant structures of thought that frame the world we live in.
Oscillating between poetry, photography, video, drawings, and curatorial projects, Ayinde’s work is in a constant negotiation with itself, trying to understand the role it plays in building the worlds it is invested in imagining. Most recently, his work is shaped by a dance around the possibility opened up by the logics of black holes, specifically when read in conversation with the historical and material conditions of blackness.
Rohan Ayinde is one half of the wayward/motile collaborative duo i.as.in.we, with friend/producer/dancer Yewande YoYo Odunubi. He received his MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2019). He is a curatorial fellow with ACRE projects, and has curated shows at Blanc Gallery (Chicago), ACRE Projects (Chicago) and NOW Gallery (London).
Ayinde’s work exists in many places, both fleeting and permanent.
Oscillating between poetry, photography, video, drawings, and curatorial projects, Ayinde’s work is in a constant negotiation with itself, trying to understand the role it plays in building the worlds it is invested in imagining. Most recently, his work is shaped by a dance around the possibility opened up by the logics of black holes, specifically when read in conversation with the historical and material conditions of blackness.
Rohan Ayinde is one half of the wayward/motile collaborative duo i.as.in.we, with friend/producer/dancer Yewande YoYo Odunubi. He received his MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2019). He is a curatorial fellow with ACRE projects, and has curated shows at Blanc Gallery (Chicago), ACRE Projects (Chicago) and NOW Gallery (London).
Ayinde’s work exists in many places, both fleeting and permanent.
Denny Mwaura is a curator and writer based in Chicago. He is the Assistant Director at Gallery 400, UIC. Exhibitions and public programs his curatorial research has supported include, A Species of Theft (2022) and Young, Gifted and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art at Gallery 400; Malangatana: Mozambique Modern (2020), Igshaan Adams: Desire Lines (2022) at the Art Institute of Chicago; Wong Ping: Digital Fables (2021) and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich: Speculative Archives (2021) at Conversations at the Edge. He has published writings on artists including Kapwani Kiwanga, Amanda Williams, Daniela Rivera, and Senzeni Marasela.
Mwaura was the 2021 recipient of the Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Critical Architectural Writing, an award granted by the Department of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. He received his MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mwaura was the 2021 recipient of the Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Critical Architectural Writing, an award granted by the Department of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. He received his MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Adia Sykes is a Chicago-based independent curator and arts administrator. Her current research examines the potential of curating as an advocacy tool for racial equity in the arts. Through her practice, she seeks to center philosophies of improvisation and intuition, engaging them as tools by which meaningful relationships between artists and viewers can be cultivated, while leaving space for the vernacular to mingle with constructs of history and theory. Her curatorial projects include Locating Memory (Chicago Mayor’s Office, 2018), Project Radio London (Centro Arte Opificio Siri in Terni, Italy, 2018), and The Petty Biennial.2 (Chicago, 2019-2020). She has also realized projects with the Art Institute of Chicago, Sullivan Galleries, Woman Made Gallery, Material Exhibitions, Roman Susan Gallery, and Comfort Station.
Adia earned a Masters of Arts from the Department of Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2018) and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago (2016) with a focus on material culture and museums.
Adia earned a Masters of Arts from the Department of Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2018) and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago (2016) with a focus on material culture and museums.
Rory Kahiya Tsapayi is a 2021 graduate in Journalism and Art History from Northwestern University. Raised in Zimbabwe and educated in the United States, their work is driven by a desire to connect twentieth-century Black histories on and off the continent through visual media, especially social documentary photography. Most recently, they explored anti-apartheid photography and magazine publishing in 1980s South Africa in a J. Carson Webster Prize-winning Honors Thesis in Art History. Having worked as a librarian at the Stony Island Arts Bank, a docent at the Block Museum of Art, and an arts and culture reporter at the Daily Maverick (Cape Town), Rory’s practices are archival, journalistic, educational, and artistic.