28 Mar 4/1/25 Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde
[Image Description: Ayodamola Okunseinde, a Black man with facial hair, and dreadlocks styled upwards. They wear black-rimmed glasses and a laced black and transparent top. His gaze is directed upwards, out of the frame. The right side of their face is illuminated by a smoky light effect that suggests a sense of otherworldliness. Photo Credit: @roxanarios_studio]
Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde
Tuesday | April 1, 2025 | 12PM – 1:30PM ET
Bush of Ghosts: Spirits, Community, and Technology in the Co-Creation of Nigeria’s Transatlantic Slave Trade Memorialization
This talk explores the complex ways in which Nigeria memorializes the transatlantic slave trade, moving beyond traditional archival approaches to center spiritual, communal, and technological dimensions. It examines how indigenous spiritual practices, often overlooked due to colonial erasures, intersect with contemporary media, museum narratives, and community rituals like Egungun. Through multimodal ethnography, material analysis of artifacts, and collaborative co-creation of memory experiences, the project investigates how these elements shape understanding of the slave trade’s legacy.
Bio:
Ayodamola Okunseinde (ayo) is a Nigerian-American artist, designer, and time-traveler working in New York. His works exist between physical and digital spaces; across the past, present, and future. Okunseinde’s works ask us, via a technological lens, to reimagine notions of race, identity, politics, and culture as we travel through time and space. He holds a BA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University, an M.F.A. in Design and Technology, and an M.A. in Anthropology from The New School where he is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology and serves as an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design