Adejoke Tugbiyele

Musician II, 2014

The sculptural objects of queer artist Adejoke Tugbiyele, who partly grew up in Nigeria and today lives in the United States, evoke a transitive presence through humanoid-abstract silhouettes and materials such as wickerwork or wire mesh. Between figure and everyday object, natural material and plastic, art and handicraft, her sculptures establish an open field of tension. Tugbiyele often includes her body-related and yet generally dysfunctional objects in performances, discussing questions of identity and acceptance. They negotiate references between conceptions of gender, race and sexuality and class affiliation, economy and ritual. Tugbiyele transforms her own experiences as a “queer person of color” into artistic strategies that relativize existing patriarchal structures through matriarchal forms, materials, systems and strategies. Her work formulates a possible overcoming of the boundaries between a supposedly binary nature of masculinity and femininity.