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Olalekan Jeyifous' reconstituted 'Unmonument' comes to Brooklyn with the Black Reconstruction Collective

2024-07-30T13:01:00-04:00

Next week, Brooklyn’s Weeksville Heritage Center begins the first of a new imaginative public art installations series from the Black Reconstruction Collective. There, the industrial ‘Unmonument’ will take center stage starting August 8 as the instigator of several other small site activations surrounding it. The aim is to challenge the conventional notions of what the collective says are the most frequently perpetuated ‘myths’ about power, permanence, and the collective experience of the societies that construct them.

As a memorial to the many liberated Black diasporic communities across the country, such as Weeksville, the installation highlights an important narrative within Black history and is augmented by programming from the multidisciplinary oral tradition incubator Black Discourse.

The Crown Heights rendition, reconfigured by Olalekan Jeyifous, precedes Sekou Cooke's Syracuse contribution in September; another from Felecia Davis in Bellefonte, PA, in December; and, next ye...

NYC approves Olalekan Jeyifous and Amanda Williams' Shirley Chisholm monument for Brooklyn

2023-07-18T14:48:00-04:00

New York City is getting a new monument dedicated to the late pioneering Brooklyn congresswoman Shirley Chisholm following the approval on Monday, July 17, of a sculpture designed by artists Olalekan Jeyifous and Amanda Williams.

The piece is part of the city’s new She Built NYC initiative, a series of public art commissions created under the de Blasio administration that will install monuments to historic trailblazers in every borough over a proposed four-year timeline.

A previously-approved version of the monument, which will be the first ever to depict a woman in Brooklyn, was delayed through the pandemic and will now restart using a slightly refined design featuring a gestalt of imagery that combines Chisholm’s silhouette and the U.S. Capitol Building dome into one 32-foot latticed steel form. The artists say this combination “symbolizes how she disrupted the perception of who has the right to occupy such institutions and to be an embodiment for democracy.”

The 2019 'Our Desti...

Next Up: Exhibit Columbus / Olalekan Jeyifous

2021-08-16T15:40:00-04:00

Archinect Sessions Next Up: Exhibit Columbus continues with sharing conversations with the recipients of The J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize. Today's episode is a conversation with Olalekan Jeyifous .

Olalekan, who also goes by LEk, as Paul refers to him in the conversation, is a Nigerian-born visual artist with an architecture degree from Cornell. His work has been widely exhibited at institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA, Vitra Design Museum and the Guggenheim Bilboa. His work ranges from large-scale art commissions in public spaces and festivals to commercial installations. His contribution to this year's Exhibit Columbus is a fascinating hybrid of physical and virtual space entitled Archival/Revival. The installation directly references exhibits at the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, the site of the installation, from 1970, celebrating the Black and African arts.

Listen to “Next Up: Exhibit Columbus / Olalekan Jeyifous”.

iTunes: Click here to listen, and cl...

Jennifer Bonner, Walter Hood, and Olalekan Jeyifous recognized as 2021 USA Fellows

2021-02-04T09:04:00-05:00

United States Artist (USA) has announced their 2021 USA Fellows. Across ten disciplines ranging from architecture and design to film, writing, and music, sixty artists were inducted, making it the largest fellowship cohort the organization has awarded during its 15-year history.

"The USA Fellowship is the organization's flagship program and is central to its mission of believing in artists and their essential role in society. In many ways, 2020 has shown the resilience and necessity of that mission and the organization. As a founding partner of Artist Relief, United States Artists helped to distribute over $20 million in direct funding to nearly 4,000 artists in need [...] To make its work possible, United States Artists actively fundraises each year and is supported by a broad range of philanthropic foundations, companies, and individuals committed to cultivating contemporary culture across the country" shares the organization.

Each fellow will receive unrestricted $50,000 cash awa...