Kayode Ojo: Eden

Kayode Ojo’s sculptural installations made of ready-made items prompt reflections on class, consumption, and the fragility of luxury.

“There is a sense of urgency in these fleeting collisions between fashion and art. It’s the kind of tenuous exchange between culture and commerce that he does best.” —W magazine

Replete with sequins, chrome finishes, and transparent and reflective surfaces, Ojo’s sleek sculptures move between the related visual languages of delicate minimalism and glittering opulence, foregrounding the transformative power of the material object and its ability to transport its owner through dimensions of time, place, and social status. Sourcing his materials from fast-fashion websites and online shopping hubs, the artist weaves the familiar cadences of searching, scrolling, purchasing, and receiving into his nimble artistic practice. Ojo works instinctively to refashion these items into poetic yet perverse arrangements that make visible the phenomenon of social aspiration, unveiling its double-edged nature as a facilitator of both belonging and instability.

Texts in this volume, including a curator’s note by Ebony L. Haynes and an essay by Serubiri Moses, explore Ojo’s influences and examine the consumerism that is both called out by and a central component of the artist’s creative practice.

Born in Cookeville, Tennessee, Kayode Ojo (b. 1990) received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2012. Ojo has had solo presentations at galleries worldwide, most recently at Von Ammon Co., Washington, DC (2023); Universita` Iuav di Venezia, Venice (2022); Sweetwater, Berlin (2021); Martos Gallery, New York (2020); Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles (2020); Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris (2018); and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2018).

Ebony L. Haynes is a writer and curator from Toronto. She is based in New York, where she is a director at David Zwirner. Haynes is a visiting curator and critic at the Yale School of Art in the painting and printmaking class of 2021. She also runs an online “school” that offers free professional practice classes to Black students worldwide. 

Serubiri Moses is an independent writer and curator who currently lives in New York. He is cocurator for the fifth edition of the contemporary art survey Greater New York at MoMA PS1, Long Island City. In 2020 and 2021, he served as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Hunter College, where he taught contemporary African and Black art history.