“ARCANUM” Cyber Gallery
Olaiya Olayemi: ado: a (re)mixed media installation
ado: a (re)mixed media installation
Olaiya Olayemi, constructed by gabbah baya and Natalie Valcourt, Cyber Altar, 2020. Table, gold-yellow cloth, five oranges, four glasses of water, four honey bees, hand mirror, peacock feather, white candle, lavender plant and vase.
ado: a (re)mixed media installation is a site-specific performance ritual by Olaiya Olayemi (Capricorn) that took place on November 7, 2020 at Riverbank State Park, on the Hudson River. Fusing sound, movement, text, and visual installation, audience-participant-witnesses were invited to wash their hands with rose water and give offerings of oranges to Oshun. “It is a celebration,” Olayemi writes. “It is a jubilation. It is a homecoming. It is making lemonade out of lemons. It is bitterness turned sweet. It is a rapture, a riff, and a rupture. it is a conjuring, a divination, and a possession. It is the past, present, and future converging.”
Within Olayemi's digital dreamscape, you will traverse infinite circles, to pay homage to Yoruban deities, praised by Olayemi's cyber altar. Bestowing investigable offerings for her Orishas, Olayemi offers short films of ritual dance. Through witnessing Olayemi's gifts, you will become acquainted with the Goddesses of rivers and the sea, Oshun and Yemaya.
The artworks in this gallery can be viewed within a playable video game, an immerse dreamscape constructed by gabbah baya and Natalie Valcourt, with an audio score by HiFadility.
Please note that this game is not compatible with Safari, or mobile phones. It is best played on a desktop (Mac or PC) using Chrome or Firefox.
Above: ado (a remix of my name), video, 2020; ado: a (re)mixed media installation, excerpt of performance at Riverbank State Park, GIF, 2020
ABOUT OLAIYA OLAYEMI
Image by Felicita “Felli” Maynard for the 2020 Queer|Art Community Portrait Project
Olaiya Olayemi (aka mistress lovely olayummy the punk rock priestess of pleasure aka miss o aka jungle girl in a civilized world) is a blk / trans / womyn / writer / performance artist / filmmaker / and sound artist. Her work draws on blk diasporic queer feminist aesthetics and theories and is infused with a blk feminist politic of pleasure and ethic of joy. She creates highly experimental / interdisciplinary works of art where she explores love / sex / relationships / family / history / memory / and radical joy / pleasure in the lives of blk womyn. She holds a BA in English from DePaul University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College.
Links: Instagram