A solo show by Igi Lola Ayedun where the artist unveil her new body of abstract works, all made out of pure silk.

Igi Lola Ayedun is a multimedia artist, based between São Paulo and Paris, and also the founder and director of HOA (House of Ayedun), Brazil’s first ever Black-owned art gallery and nonprofit organization dedicated to spotlighting artists of color, Indigenous, and African/Asian diaspora narratives. In her work, the Paulista artist delves into the exploration of the historical and cultural significance of color, especially blue, as well as textile traditions through the history of the Silk Road, exploring the intersections between ancient trade routes and contemporary artistic practices. Her research led her to find out that the recovery of indigenous ways in the manipulation of materials and the preservation of intergenerational knowledge could represent a possible antidote to the historical amnesia within the experience of the Brazilian Afro-diasporic community. Rehabilitating matter and artistic production in light of the global history of resource exploitation then becomes a decolonial exercise. Because textile is not just fabric, it is a sacred and political act, a testament of the resilience of those who came before. Hence, Ayedun diverts the primary destination of silk – usually associated with Western aesthetics and artistic techniques, where it symbolizes voluptuousness, softness and sophistication. She gives it relief, fixing this usually malleable material and thus giving it a skeleton, a body, a presence, a history, and a memory.