Okoyomon, who lived in Lagos, Nigeria as a child before moving to Texas and then Ohio, added: “I attach myself to materials such as soil, rocks, water and fire because these are things I cannot control on my own. ”
As part of the Frieze win, Okoyomon conceived and presented a performance-based installation in the Shed titled “This God Is A Slow Recovery” which focused on communication or the lack of it. “It’s about destroying our language, building it up, making the words collide,” Okoyomon said. “How do we create the language to go to the new world?”
This month, Okoyomon won a Chanel Next Prize, a new award from the French fashion brand created to nurture emerging talent, nominated by a group of cultural figures and selected by judges Tilda Swinton, David Adjaye and Cao Fei.
Dance
Kayla Farrish
In September, dancer and choreographer Kayla Farrish, along with jazz, soul and experimental musician Melanie Charles, transported Brooklyn’s Maria Hernandez Park to a vibrant scene of grace and power.
The performance – as part of the platform four/four presents, which mandates collaborations between artists – was “sweeping and robust work that interweaves music and spoken word with choreography” that encompassed the best of technical dance and athletic practice, said Gia Kourlas. , the dance critic at The Times.
The result turned the five dancers — Farrish, 30, joined by Mikaila Ware, Kerime Konur, Gabrielle Loren and Anya Clarke-Verdery — into a vibrant union of musicality, tenderness and strength,” Kourlas wrote.