Unit London is thrilled to announce the opening of Ayobola Kekere-Ekun’s Platform exhibition. Her solo show is now live in our online viewing room (click here to view).
As an artist led gallery, Unit London is dedicated to supporting its artists and providing a focussed space in which they can express their ideas. The Platform exhibition series engages with topical social, political and cultural issues, inviting artists to explore the concepts that motivate their work. To align with the core social principles of the programme, 10% of all sales proceeds are donated to a charity or non-profit of the artist’s choosing. Ayobola Kekere-Ekun’s nominated charity is Stand to End Rape. This youth-led social initiative advocates against sexual violence, working to provide prevention mechanisms and to support survivors.
Ayobola Kekere-Ekun’s Platform exhibition presents a new body of work entitled, She and I. This series examines how unresolved trauma can affect memory. After the realisation that many of her childhood memories were either missing or falsified, Kekere-Ekun undertook an artistic journey to recreate and reimagine the forgotten. Drawing from source materials such as old family photographs, interviews and pop cultural references, these artworks aim to reconstruct the artist’s obscured childhood.
Kekere-Ekun’s meticulous artistic practice involves strips of paper, fabric and canvas. This intricate way of working is reflective of the complex process of uncovering memory. The artist’s use of familiar and everyday materials, such as paper, chimes with us all on a universal level. However, Kekere-Ekun chooses to repurpose these seemingly commonplace materials, creating new meaning from them and inviting us to rethink what we already know. In grappling with the highly personal, Kekere-Ekun’s latest body of work attempts to unravel the connections between the self and identity and how these interact with individual and collective memory.