Okoyomon, who lived in Lagos, Nigeria as a child before moving to Texas and then Ohio, added, “I hang on to materials like earth, rocks, water and fire because I cannot control these things by myself. ”
As part of the Frieze win, Okoyomon designed and presented a performance-based installation at the Shed entitled “This God Is A Slow Recovery” that focused on communication or its lack. “It’s about destroying our language, building it up, collapsing the words,” said Okoyomon. “How do we create the language to get into the new world?”
This month Okoyomon won the Chanel Next Prize, a new award from the French fashion brand founded to promote emerging talent, nominated by a group of cultural figures and selected by jurors Tilda Swinton, David Adjaye and Cao Fei.
To dance
Kayla Farrish
In September, the dancer and choreographer Kayla Farrish, together with the jazz, soul and experimental musician Melanie Charles, whisked Maria Hernandez Park in Brooklyn into a lively scene of grace and power.
The performance – as part of the four / four Presents platform, which commissions collaborations between artists – was “extensive and robust work that intertwined music and spoken word with choreography” that included the best of technical dance and athletic exercise, Gia said Kourlas, the dance critic at The Times.
The result transformed his five dancers – Farrish, 30, led by Mikaila Ware, Kerime Konur, Gabrielle Loren and Anya Clarke-Verdery – into a living union of musicality, tenderness and power, ”wrote Kourlas.
