An exhibition of new work created by 500 Capp Street International Artist-in-Residence yétúndé ọlágbajú
November 9, 2024 – January 9, 2025
Free opening reception: November 9, 2024; 2-5pm. Get your tickets on this link.
In an exhibition of new work, 500 Capp Street’s 2023-24 International Artist-in-Residence yétúndé ọlágbajú envisions David Ireland’s historic home as a place of dialogue and reflection on our current realities, legacies, and imagined futures.
Developed over the yearlong residency, a spiral fuels and fills features bronze sculpture, video, textile works, and a sound installation, co-developed with ten other artists.
The conceptual exploration of the spiral’s symbolism is a recurring theme. “It arrives as a form that supports our fires, provides us protection and momentum, and offers us a clear vantage point between where we’ve come from and where we are headed,” says the artist.
The video work on display documents spiral fire no. 1, an earth work ọlágbajú created as part of their 2022 ACRE residency in rural Wisconsin. The artist dug a 30 foot wide spiral fire pit in a soybean field, filled it with firewood, and tended the flames through the night with the other resident artists. Their conversations and collective labor to sustain the fire are captured in the work.
Some of the same artists who participated in spiral fire no. 1 have contributed to the sound installation ọlágbajú has created for the exhibition, reflecting the artist’s deep investment in collaborative meaning making. The installation will activate most spaces within 500 Capp Street with sounds of bird calls, cascading chords, heavy feet on a staircase, calls to action, sliding earth, and trickling water. Says ọlágbajú, “These will all spiral together as both lamentation and celebration in response to the questions that rouse us all: What fuels us to act? What do we inherit? What nourishes? And what must we destroy?”
The sound work is also inspired by the sonic porousness of 500 Capp Street. “One of the most exciting aspects of 500 Capp Street is that sonically there is little separation from the outside of the home,” says ọlágbajú. “We rely on shutting our doors, windows, and ears to the street when we are home, but in the House, we are forced to listen and to hear each other.”
The symbolism of the spiral and the elemental nature of fire are further reflected in the sculptural works ọlágbajú is creating. Using a lost wax casting process, the artist honors their Yorùbá roots with a bronze piece for the outdoors that turns a spiral into a ritual object for candles. Numerous small, heart-shaped, hydrostone pieces, each entitled sankofa and each braided like hair, will also hold candles and be placed throughout the House.
A turmeric-dyed textile piece will hang in the windows above David Ireland’s desk, where ọlágbajú spent many hours reading and writing during their residency. The piece is a call to action for observers both inside and outside.
Collaborating artists for the sound installation include Tyler Holmes, eli meza, Avé-Ameenah, Hazel Katz, Lois Bielefeld, Titania Kumeh, mata flores, Slant Rhyme, Rian Crane, and tiffany m. johnson.
There will be a public program on December 9, 2024 titled, a lament The December 9th performance will make connections between memorial and monument work to collective grief work; that is over invisibilized or made silent through ongoing genocides, plutocracy, facism, and state violence. More info here.
About the Artist
yétúndé ọlágbajú (b. 1990) is a research-based artist, creative producer, and residency director living on Ohlone and Tataviam lands (Bay Area & Los Angeles, CA). Their work roots in a single question: What must we reckon with as we build a future, together?
With no set answers or expectations, ọlágbajú unravels intricate connections as a means of highlighting our interdependence. They are interested in how our familial, platonic, romantic, and ecological bonds are affected by what we confront in the reckoning.
Through their social practice they have co-founded and are a member of numerous artist and worker-led collectives, each with liberatory missions and values. An advocate for non-hierarchical working structures, they embrace shared leadership models that challenge white supremacy, by actively rejecting disposability and urgency — two of its guiding tenets.
They hold an MFA from Mills College and are the recipient of multiple awards including a YBCA 100 award and a Headlands Center for the Arts fellowship. They were a recent awardee of The Lightening Fund by LACE, Los Angeles, CA, resident at Center for Afrofuturist Studies, Iowa City, IA, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME. They are a co-director and creative producer at Level Ground.
This exhibition is generously funded by the Sanger Family Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and San Francisco Arts Commission.