Ayobola Kekere-Ekun Quotes

There are few things as glaring as dishonest work. If you don’t value your point of view, no one else will.

There's also the use of material, which confuses people at first. What on earth is it? Because you're not quite sure what you're looking at, and that curiosity compels you to dig a little deeper, and just try to make sense of what you're seeing. It forces you to reconsider what you think you know, about the material, because, I mean, it's just, it's like the blandest materials, you know. It's just there, you know. You don't really think about it, and you don't really think about what it could do. And so when you see it used in such an unusual way, it does kind of trigger reconsiderations of what you think you know, and how you think you know, it. This feeds into everything.

Yes. Your degrees are printed on it. Money is printed on it. It’s what you’d distract a toddler with or wedge a table with. You know, it's so universal it’s a great Trojan horse quite frankly. Because everyone is familiar with it in some form, or the other. But it's boring and universal enough that you never actually give it a second thought.

I get very attached to my tools. They've come with me every time I've moved. So whatever tools I start project with, I will usually stick with them. Throughout. I also get superstitious about cleaning parts of my studio when I work. I will usually avoid cleaning in the middle of stage. It just messes with the energy otherwise. I don't know how else to explain it. When I'm really struggling to work, I take la few days off. And I reread two favourite books. It can’t be a new book has to be something I've read before and loved. I read two books. And then I watch Beyoncé’s “I Am” world tour. It works every time.

The work can be difficult to define – is it a craft or an art? It’s something a suburban mum in Arkansas would use to make cards.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I am a little healthier now in the sense that I keep the work out of my bedroom. This is something I just started like literally like two months ago. It was a matter of, I love you but I need some space.

I find myself gravitating towards what I call ‘bubble-gum books’. Nothing heavy, nothing super intellectual. Nothing that won a prize, or was, you know, shortlisted for some prestigious award. I want like the smarmy historical romances.

You have to wrench that power back! Otherwise it’ll ruin reading for you. So I've read everything Susan Elizabeth Phillips has written. Julia Quinn. Julia London. Almost all the Julias really. They tend to have nice books. Courtney Milan, Gaelen Foley, Jennifer Ashley. The list is long. There's so many of them. And then I tend to fall down rabbit holes because they’re usually a series of books. So I’ll read one book, wonder what happened to a particular character, and then find out they have their own book and immediately start reading that. It’s the best thing, really.

I do not. She legally belonged to the school, because she was an exam piece. So technically, she wasn't mine. So I never got to actually keep her.

There is. There's always a chance I might never see them again. And I do have quite a few pieces that I haven’t seen since they left. And I do think about them, like are they happy?

There are few things as glaring as dishonest work. If you don’t value your point of view, no one else will. There’s something very humbling or rewarding in people whom I’ve never met, finding a connection with what I have to say.

My PHD is art and design. Academically, I’m more of a graphic designer. My research is exploring place branding, in Lagos. So I'm basically exploring how the state government in like the last decade has co-opted certain architectural and cultural monuments as signifiers for the state. But I'm arguing that they carry unexamined histories that kind of complicate their use. You know, it's as if you are trying to position yourself as a super modern, inclusive type state, but you're using a symbol that is actually really classist and patriarchal and really quite problematic. There's just this ironic tension in there. And that's sort of what my research is examining.

I did not! When I watch stuff, I'm so not a critic. Like for me to say a movie is bad, it was horrendously bad. I don't watch movies tv to critique them to death. I just I want to be somewhere else. I'm not looking for like, plot holes or implausible things. I actively shut down my brain from looking for twists and stuff. I rarely see what's coming. And I love it that way.

When I was younger, my dream was always to live a life where I would wake up, and do whatever I wanted. And for the most part, I'm already living that life. I think that's a big part of what keeps my life going. It's a big part of what drives my practice. I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do, how I want to do it. I'm saying exactly what I want to say how I want to say it without compromising my vision or intention. It's something to be grateful for. I would say that freedom, that sense of freedom, is my fuel. Freedom to explore the world on my own terms.

And so I started experimenting. I didn't know what I was doing with that first piece, I just knew it was gonna go really well or really badly. And so I started it in school, then we went on holiday and got kicked out of student housing. I had to go home and take the piece home because I wasn't done with it. And my parents were just obsessed! I would like walk into my little makeshift studio in some corner of the living room, and my dad would be there or my mum would be there just looking at it. You know? And the question was always the same. How? How did you start? How did you know?