Yewande YoYo Odunubi is an artist, researcher and cultural producer working in the spaces between movement, research and facilitation. Centring her practice around the core inquiry: “what does the body need to dream?” she is concerned with what can be enacted into space through connecting to one’s intuitive experiences and bodily rhythms. Viewing the body beyond the idea of a singular, fixed form, identity or function, Yewande is interested in movement, dance and rhythm(s) as languages and processes of knowledge production and world-building. Her work often explores how theory and practice can be processed and actioned in the body, experimenting with dance, movement and live and filmed performance as acts of translation and a means of dialogue with the body’s present potentials and imagined possibilities.
Photograph: © Darryl Daley
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Alongside poet, curator and friend Rohan Ayinde, Yewande is one-half of the wayward/motile collaborative duo i.as.in.we formed in 2020. Her most recent exhibition Calling the Body to attention (2022), was presented by International Curators Forum (ICF) at Block 336. Yewande was ICF’s Diasporic Curatorial Animateur Fellow, 2021-2022 and has completed residencies with g39 and Yinka Shonibare Foundation/Guest Projects Digital. She is a recipient of the Jerwood Live Work Fund 2021. Yewande is also a member of Black Curators Collective.
As a cultural producer, she has produced public programmes in art spaces and cultural institutions including; 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, BLANK100, CCA Glasgow, Free Word, International Curators Forum (ICF), Now Gallery, Tate, V&A and Wellcome Collection. She has also been a frequent creative collaborator of London-based art and music curators BBZ and Touching Bass.
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i.as.in.we is the wayward/motile collaboration between Rohan Ayinde and Yewande YoYo Odunubi. Working across mediums and between individual practices, their work explores the relationship between source material and final output, experimenting with different modes of translation and collaborative improvisation. From this space they generate a continuously unfolding landscape they’ve termed the 'b/Black Expansive Imagination.' Drifting between text, movement, mark-making, video and curatorial projects their work seeks to develop language(s) that help them understand new ways for being/becoming in this world.