Selected Artists 2018

OJUDUN TAIWO JACOB is a multimedia performance artist from Lagos. He lives and works as a performer, chorographer and curator in the Bariga district on the mainland of Lagos. In 2012 he founded the Illuminate Theater Lagos, whose artistic director he has been since. He received his choreographic and artistic / conceptual training through his many years of collaboration in the Crown Troupe of Africa in Bariga / Lagos. In particular, the jury was impressed both by its strong artistic profile, which he developed in a self-named existentialist style, despite art-far-removed contexts, and by his concept, which deliberately addresses the Western context. Ojudun Taiwo Jacob's art works have a strong connection to public space using participatory approaches. Galerie Wedding has a specific interest in promoting performative positions in the context of visual art. The jury believes that the residence Ojudun Taiwo Jacob's work can provide crucial artistic impulses for the further development of his work.

Foto:Ananda Freyria/N.Castillo

NATALIA ORENDAIN DEL CASTILLO is a 1983 in Mexico born visual artist and scenographer. In her native country, she started her studies in visual arts specializing in sculpture. With an ongoing interest in all performative arts, she continued her studies in the Kunsthochschule in Berlin Weissensee as a stage and costume designer. Since 2012, she has participated in several forms of experimental, documentary and music theatre productions in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Prague, Norway and Mexico. Her artistic research focuses on the subjects of space perception and production, sound as creator of space and the performativity within the everyday; making use of immersive, installative and participatory formats to explore the audience´s experience.

Photo: Joyce Nicholls

JUMOKE ADEYANJU was raised in Aachen, Germany. She studied Area Studies Asia/Africa at the Humboldt University of Berlin, now pursuing a Master Degree in South- and Southeast Asia Studies. Jumoke has worked as a research assistant and undergrad-lecturer (teaching on Necropolitics, Fanon, charity politics and Performing Arts in East Africa) at the Humboldt University and Alice Salomon University respectively. Prior to her academic journey, Jumoke dived into Hip Hop culture as a young dancer. In 2012, Jumoke organized the first Break Dance Battle of Zanzibar. She recently joined the newly founded “blackism collective”, a multidisciplinary movement artists collective. They premiered their first piece “(self-)vations” at SAVVY contemporary in March 2018. Next to dance and academia, Jumoke has successfully evolved as a host of multiple cultural events and as a multilingual poet. She has been on stage at variousoccasions in Germany, Tanzania and New York performing her poems in English, German, Kiswahili and Yorùbá. Jumoke Adeyanju is the founder of “The Poetry Meets Series” and co-director of “Ujamaa Culture Center e.V”, a community center for African-diasporic people, momentarily facilitating exhibitions/installations, african language courses (Twi) and film screenings. Jumoke is also a freelance translator (German-English-Kiswahili), (vinyl-)DJ and radio host on Berlin Community Radio for YAASAA - an african media platform. In her work as an allround-artist, she is interested in how various elements of expressive artforms interrelate and incorporate the potential to (re-)create moments of reviving other or rather lost selves.