Jumoke Sanwo
Jumoke is a self-taught, lens based, visual storyteller and cultural interlocutor from Lagos Nigeria...
She holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A) in English studies from the Obafemi Awolowo university Ile-Ife. Her medium of expression includes photography, video art and virtual reality. She navigates her postcolonial environment, reflecting on self-perception and division, experienced through time and space. Her work engages Afro-aesthetic concerns, while querying pre-existing notion of self and identity, she focuses on enlightenment, spirituality, technology and mobility; while rethinking and engaging ongoing narrative on the decolonisation discourse. Her conceptual framework and process are largely informed by “global localization” or “Glocal” with a local approach to storytelling where the individual cultures, histories, traditions are presented as independent frames within a global picture.
Her functional summary includes exhibitions in the US, Canada, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, brussels, UAE, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Ethiopia, Malawi, Benin, Chad & Ghana.
In 2012 she participated at the New Museum of New York’s “Ungovernables” triennial and at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 under the Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Project.
She was one of the selected artists at the spring 2013 edition of the Harlem postcard at the studio museum of Harlem in new York; her series silence des femme was at the African contemporary photography auction by the auction room of London in 2014. Silence was also a finalist at the Prisma human rights award by the EUNIC in 2015.
Jumoke participated at the 2nd edition of Electric South’s residential VR lab in 2017 and was mentored by VR veterans Jessica Brillhart, Darren Emerson, Oscar Raby and Ainsley Sutherland.
In 2019, she created and directed Lagos at large, a virtual reality film, which premiered at the 2019 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and was nominated for awards in two categories, digital storytelling prize and the special jury prize for creative use of technology. Lagos at large, was also listed in the Forbes magazine top 50 XR experiences of 2019.
She is a member of the x-perspective, black female photographers association, Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Project.
She is the founder and creative director of the Revolving Art Incubator, an alternate art space in Lagos, which was listed in the February 2019 New York Times article, as one of the sharpest artist-led spaces in Lagos.
