G.A.S. Foundation welcomes Evan Ifekoya as its latest artist-in-residence, whose residency is made possible through the British Council. The Nigerian-born` interdisciplinary artist's practice is an exercise in honoring the sacredness of sound. With the elevation of black consciousness in mind, their exploration of sound's sacredness and healing potential has taken on a new dimension. Drawing on the elements of water and fire, they are now exploring more symbolic and ritual mediums within their studio. They see their practice as a medium to subvert and redefine conventions and systems in contemporary spaces and places.
What is the current focus of your creative practice?
Sonic architecture, sacred and ritual space, physiopoetics of water.
My work takes a multi-dimensional approach to exploring the intersections of sound, architecture, and the body. I'm exploring a more mystical outlook to examining the relationship between space and sound, and generally creating wholly immersive, sensory experiences that transform the body's relationship to space and sound.
Evan Ifekoya, Resonant Frequencies, (2022), exhibition view, Migros Museum, Zurich. Photo: Stefan Altenburger
What drew you to apply for this residency, and how will it inform your wider practice?
One of the most attractive things about the residency at G.A.S. is the opportunity to visit and explore various water bodies and sacred sites in Lagos and upcountry, I'm also hoping to connect authentically with Nigerian indigenous sound - with a specific focus on percussion instruments- which will help me generate a body of sonic material that will form the basis of my sound work.
Evan Ifekoya, Ritual Without Belief, Installation view, 2018. Commissioned by Gasworks. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate
Can you give us an insight into how you hope to use the opportunity?
The opportunity is great for reconnecting with Nigeria, Nigerians, and native spirituality. Work produced during this residency will be exhibited at the upcoming Lagos Biennial. During the residency, I'll also spend time working on my research into the life and work of Amelia Pedroso.
Undercurrent 528, film still, Evan Ifekoya, (2022)
RESIDENCY ARCHIVE
EVENT: Water is Life, O!
Event Date: 16th March 2023
Evan Ifekoya's month-long Lagos residency at G.A.S. Foundation culminated in Water is Life, O! - a listening session that skillfully blended various sounds from Ifekoya's residency. The sonic offering featured a compositional cocktail; voiceovers from mundane and intentional encounters from across the city were masterfully layered with marine acoustics from Lagos' lagoons, various beaches across the city, Osun Oshogbo sacred grove, and the point of no return; Badagry's infamous former slave trade port. Voices wove in and out of the ambient sound, alternating between melodic and cacophonous, punctuated only by clear, piercing, yet haunting tones from the artist's crystallophones.
Sonic materials used for the presentation, Water is Life, O!
EVENT: Traces of Ecstasy (Lagos Biennial 2024)
Event Date: 3rd - 10th February 2024
At the Traces of Ecstacy Pavillion at the 2024 edition of Lagos Biennial, Evan Ifekoya presented an immersive sound installation that explored the reparative and knowledge-producing capacities of sound. Incorporating sounds of water in various state changes, the work metaphorically alludes to the melting, liquefaction, and sublimation of the postcolonial nation-state. Such fluidity further points to queer, non-statist possibilities that destabilize structures of national, gender, sexual, and ethnic identification. Ifekoya's immersive sound score also includes speeches by Tafawa Balewa, Yoruba polyrhythmic drumming, and the artist's spoken narrations on healing and self-knowing.
The speakers - prototypes of which were developed while in residence at G.A.S. Foundation - are made from dried calabash gourds, which in various West African cosmologies are mythically linked to the creation of the universe and symbolise, via their double spherical shape, the porous relation between the physical world of the living and the metaphysical world of the spirits, ancestors, and the unborn.
Gourd Speaker, Traces of Ecstasy Pavilion, 2024. Photography by Amanda Iheme. Photo courtesy of KJ Abudu.
ABOUT EVAN IFEKOYA
EVAN IFEKOYA (b. Iperu Nigeria, lives in London) is an artist whose work in community organising, installation, performance, sound, text and video is an extension of their calling as a spiritual practitioner. They view art as a site where resources can be both redistributed and renegotiated, whilst challenging the implicit rules and hierarchies of public and social space. Strategies of space holding through architectural interventions; archival and sonic investigations; ritual and sound enable them to make a practice of living in order not to turn to despair.
They established the collectively run Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.) in 2018. They have presented exhibitions, moving image and performances across UK and Internationally, most recently: a solo exhibition at Migros Museum Zurich (2022); Herbert Art Gallery and Museum as nominees of the Turner Prize (with B.O.S.S. 2021); De Appel Netherlands (2019) and Gasworks London (2018).
