Ayobola Kekere-Ekun Quotes

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.

Oh I know! If it’s gonna be like an admin day then I'm updating my mailing list, updating my archive, working on proposals, searching for new opportunities, updating my artist statement, figuring out if I'm ready to tweak my website again, doing my books… all the things that come up basically running a business really.

I think the worst thing I learned how to do is how to snooze my emails because I do it way too often. But whenever I haven't gotten an email in like two hours, I'll send an email to myself to make sure it works!

I started actually taking pictures on my work because I was frustrated with how other people took pictures of my work. I used to hire photographers to document my work, but they weren't seeing it the way I saw it. It was the most frustrating thing and I said, you know what, to hell with this, and I bought a camera. I read the manual. I learned how to use it. And then I started taking my own pictures. But even then, it's frustrating. It's impossible to like fully translated what the work is really like in person to images, but I try. I really try. It's just trying to like just to convey a sense of that three dimensionality and how there's just so much more going on. Everything changes when you adjust your perspective just a little.

My day starts with me my calendar, my to do list, and my emails, always. They’re so essential to me because I forget things. It's the only way to keep track of my life as a whole. So the calendar helps me figure out if I have any specific appointments or commitments that I need to get on. If I have any deadlines coming up, that I need to keep an eye on, meetings… Stuff like that. To Do List, it's like the more nitty gritty stuff like… oh I'm out of a blue in particular or there's a sale at my favourite shop I need to check out today. You know stuff like that. And then my emails. I have a love hate relationship with my emails!

Maximalist. Playful. The other one that's coming to me is deceptive, but I don't want to say deceptive. It's apt but the connotations aren't quite appropriate. Because my work is like a bait and switch, it really kind of tricks you. I'm gonna say layered instead. Final answer, layered.

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.

I don't know what would have happened if I had never gotten that flyer. I don't know what would have happened if I had folded instead of rolling it. You know, it was a really, really really random discovery!

Before that my work was purely design. It was purely, you know, marketing and advertising 100%. Being a studio artist was never something that had been on my radar. My plan had been to finish school, start working in an ad agency, take over the world. But everything completely shifted when I finished the first piece.

The highest praise my Mum’s ever giving anything is “this is nice”. But she was just so taken by this new work! And I think I think that was what signalled to me that maybe this really was something special. I knew I had found something very interesting that I enjoyed and I was curious about but I think the reaction my parents had made it externally real, you know, as opposed to just internally.

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?

So I had actually started making a piece. I was making this giant 50-year calendar thingie, but I was struggling with the technical realities of making it happen. I realised I needed to switch gears or I was going to fail the term. Anyway. So, one day, some dude gave me a flyer when I was walking back to my flat, and I had rolled it up into like a coil. And when I dropped it, it landed on its edge. You know in the movies when time kind of stops. And you can see something for more than what it is. I just remember thinking. If there was lots of this, on like a surface and secured, I wonder what it would look like.

Yes… I mean, the first piece I made was for my first degree. We didn't have like a final exhibition. Not in the traditional sense where everyone had their own individual exhibitions. We had a group exhibition where you had to contribute. The piece you put in was supposed to be the accumulation of the four years you had spent doing the degree, which now I think about it, that’s a lot of pressure!

Like, it’s not an easy career. I could have been an accountant. It would have sucked and I’d be bored and miserable! It would probably be easier. But here I am.

I think we do live in a fucked-up world, but it can also be a pretty cool world. I think we also underestimate people's capacity to be kind and generous, sometimes. And then also, don't underestimate the value that you bring as well to the table.