United Kingdom | April - May 2025
Aisha Olamide Seriki is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist based in London, specializing in fine art photography and sculpture. She works from a canon of personal histories that splice contemporary realities. Her practice is holistic and embodied, subverting traditional photographic conventions through an experimental, multisensory, and conceptual visual language. Cosmological systems such as the Yoruba Spiritual Tradition inform her approach to documentation, communication, and creation. Through optics and trickery, she challenges the rigid imagination of self, creating space in the archive for a broader and more inclusive definition.
Throughout her four-week residency at G.A.S. Lagos, Aisha expanded her ongoing research into archives and cultural memory through a series of site visits, studio encounters, and community-focused programs. She travelled across Lagos, Abeokuta, Osogbo, Ibadan, and Benin City, engaging with wood carvers, metal casters, artists, and cultural historians. She also attended the Lisabi and Ogun Festivals, visited artists' studios, and spent time at institutions and galleries, including the Yemisi Shyllon Museum, Tiwani Contemporary, and the National Museum.
In Osogbo and Benin, Aisha engaged directly with artisans, bringing her own wax and silicone moulds to cast new sculptural works while sourcing local beeswax and exploring both traditional and contemporary fabrication techniques. In Lagos, her interest in documenting movement and the body materialised through collaborative photographic experiments with Leap of Dance Academy, a ballet school founded by Daniel Ajala Owoseni. She visited their studio to capture rehearsal sessions and later arranged a more formal shoot in a professional setting.
On April 30th, 2025, Aisha and fellow resident Joy Labinjo led Unearthing the Archive, an evening of discussion on the role of archives in contemporary artistic practice. The session brought together artist and G.A.S. alumna Mobolaji Ogunrosoye, along with Amaize Ojeikere, a photographer, writer, and son of the late J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, to reflect on how archival materials shape and influence artistic expression. Aisha and Joy also presented works developed by G.A.S. Alumni Karl Ohiri and Rikka Kassinen as part of their ongoing collaborative project, Lagos Studio Archives, which preserves thousands of film negatives documenting everyday life in Lagos from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Additionally, the session featured a presentation of Nigerian artist Kelani Abass's series Casting History, which uses repurposed obsolete tools and vintage portrait photographs from his father’s publishing archives to reflect on memory, loss, and the persistence of the past. Through this session, Aisha and Joy facilitated a conversation that opened space for collective memory work, cultural discourse, and future-oriented reflections on artistic practice.
Aisha Seriki’s residency was generously supported by the Royal College of Art Association of Black Students, Alumni & Friends (RCA BLK).