Architect-turned-visual artist Olalekan B. Jeyifous will present the 2022 Knowles Architecture Alumni Lecture at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, on Thursday, March 10 at 6pm ET in-person and via Zoom.
Jeyifous’s work reimagines social spaces that scrutinize the relationship between architecture, the community, and the environment, confronting social issues such as inequality, gentrification, and climate change through installations, large-scale murals, large-scale public artwork, and 3D computer models that reflect ideas about Afrofuturism and architectural dystopias.
In the Museum of Modern Art’s critically acclaimed 2021 show Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, Jeyifous explored the question “What if Black Communities were given the space and resources needed to thrive?” through digital collage, animation, and sculpture that combined his architectural training with his artistic practice.
Based in Brooklyn, he has also exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, and Guggenheim Bilbao, among other institutions. He has spent over a decade creating large-scale public installations and was recently commissioned to create a monument to US Representative Shirley Chisholm as part of New York City’s “She Built NYC” initiative.
Jeyifous has characterized his pathway to becoming a multimedia artist as a natural extension of the conceptual focus in his architectural education at Cornell and of developing an architectural practice that went beyond simply drafting and “producing design solutions” to creating a multifaceted narrative that would explain his design concepts.
Kate Wingert-Playdon, Associate Dean for Architecture and Environmental Design, said that “the arc of Jeyifous’s professional career as a visual artist who explores multiple intersections in art, design and the built environment and their relationship to critical issues in today’s society provides a window into the expansive ways of envisioning our environments and unique approaches for the teaching, study, and practice of architecture.”
Visit alumni.temple.edu to register.
