AYO AKINSETE

Ayo Akinsete, Moyo, 2018.

Afterimage by Lisa Bernhoft-Sjødin:

In Moyo, Akinsete portrays a man, partly in shadow, sitting on the edge of a flowery sofa, looking solemnly out the window in front of him. You can’t tell whether he’s focused on something happening outside the window or if he’s not looking at all, just deeply embedded in his own mind. But you know that he sits alone in this room, looking out.

The work is like a call to action, a call for an early start at sunrise. A call to move away from what has been, and move beyond the horizon before you. The title is also the namesake of the Nigerian Nobel prize laureate Wole Soyinka’s memoir from 2006. For those with little or no insight into Nigerian socio-politics, the playwright, essayist and poet Soyinka often symbolises a cause; political freedom of choice, both in Nigeria and Africa at large. His writings meditate on personal identity and a fervent critique of dictatorial rule from the mid-1950s onward.

In the memoir You must set forth at dawn (2006) Soyinka tells his life story up until the then present, in the form of anecdotes, poetry and dialogue, placing himself and people he cherishes in the story of resistance in Nigerian socio-politics. In it, he’s on his way back to Nigeria after a 5 year long exile. Soyinka describes his exile state as a «liminal but dynamic» state similar to a parachutist’s free fall. Liminal because one is in a non-scripted space, forced there by adversiaries in one’s homeland, being ousted as an enemy of the state. Dynamic because from this space you can take something like a bird’s-eye view on the country you fled from, and if you are in a safe space outside, you can start forming a new language of resistance. The memoir, as memoirs go, is also an intimate account of his life, friendships and loves, in the face of a cherished and troubled country.

Akinsete’s photographies are also intimate. The intimacy is tactile, like a living and breathing organism. I could describe the portrait as of someone in exile, an expression of sadness, someone longing, someone lonely. I could also describe the man as anticipating something, waiting for the right moment to rise and step out. The portraits lend intimacy to the series’ images of landscapes. The landscapes depict indiscernable oceans or lakes, a clearing in a forest, an industrial place, a dark cloudy sky, tangled and sculpturised industrial residue. It feels like Akinsete is portraying absence in these. A meditation on, if not the bird’s-eye view of exile, then a meditation of absence that’s propelled by a question Akinsete poses in his artist statement: ‘How do you navigate through borders and around unamerican surfaces as the privileged subject of an empire you no longer believe in?’