A conversation with Ayo Akinsete and Lisa Bernhoft-Sjødin. Ayo Akinsete’s ongoing series You Must Set Forth at Dawn(2016–) is a visual meditation on Black life America; on being born and raised in something continuously brutal in its hypocrisy; on having a privileged relationship to Blackness, but not owning it. Born in Nigeria and raised in Ohio, Akinsete never truly aspired to be American. He began making the work in 2016, months before the election of Donald Trump, when living in an itinerant state between Norway and the US. The contemplations continue; the work is ongoing.

Listen to the conversation here: