Taiwo Aiyedogbon

Works for Live Art Danmark
2022 Artist in Residence, “Asiweju” live performance, “Gèlèdè”, site-specific VR performance at Friisland, recipe for Performance Opskrifter.

Asiweju
In May of 2022, Taiwo was our artist in residence. For the fourth event of our series of regular performance events at our project space Friisland, Taiwo developed and presented ”Asiweju”, an participatory performance walk. Drawing from her research into Nigerian women leaders, Taiwo explored how national histories are written and popularized. In Asuwaju, she used methods of political procession and celebration dance to reconsider and rewrite these narratives to include the powerful contributions of Nigerian women leaders. All women in the audience were invited to participate and equipped with costumes which Taiwo had prepared. They marched through the wild surroundings of Friisland out in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn area, chanting rhythmically, while performing in a new version of an ancient yoruba ritual for powerful leaders, which Taiwo reinterpreted to empower women in today’s societies. The same performance was then shown at AROS in Aarhus in June 2022.

Gèlèdè
She also created “Gèlèdè”, a site-specific VR performance for Friisland, which was on vivew there throughout spring and early summer. She invited six Copenhagen women to participate in her personla re-telling of the story of a popular Yoruba ceremonial masquerade. MAde up and costumed lavishly, the participants were filmed using VR-technology. The resulting material was then edited into a VR-experience which visitors to Friisland could re-live long after the artist had left the premises.

Performance Opskrifter
Taiwo added a work to our collection of recipes for performances, which invites audiences to activley engage with the ideas left behind by our visiting artists. Her recipe included lying on the sun heated black top parking lot outside Copenhagen Contemporary, while drawing colorful circles around ones body witch chalk, in what looked like a celebration of personal space.

The slideshow contains images from all three of Taiwo’s contributions:

About the Artist
Taiwo Aiyedogbon is a Lagos-based visual artist who explores painting, experimental drawing, sculpture, installation and performance art. Her works often touches upon current issues related to politics and the environment in the city of Lagos. She has most recently been researching and creating conversations around women and their history in Nigeria.

Taiwo has participated in exhibitions and performances including ‘African Time Restaurant’ (Malmo, Sweden) 2015, ‘Ipele’ [phase] at the National Museum (Lagos, Nigeria) 2017, ‘Threshold’ as part of the inaugural Lagos Biennial (Lagos, Nigeria) 2017 and ‘Flip’ (Kumasi, Ghana) 2019. She graduated from the department of Fine Art at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, where she majored in sculpture, 2016.

Find more images of Taiwo’s work on her Instagram.