Yewande YoYo Odunubi

Yewande YoYo Odunubi is a neurodivergent creative practitioner, working in the spaces between producing/curation, dance/performance, and research.

Her work is interested in intersectional frameworks and interventions that seek to rupture dominant narratives in the arts. Recent work has considered how the body can be a dynamic communicator and mirror for thinking about process, ideas, and histories. Yewande is one half of the wayward, motile collaborative duo i.as.in.we with artist, curator and friend Rohan Ayinde.

The Live Work Fund will support Yewande’s expansion into a research-based dance/performance practice. Through a reflexive approach, Yewande explores her interest in the body as a medium to examine embodied practices in producing and developing live and visual artwork. As a creative practitioner, Yewande is particularly interested in the connected spaces between Black performance and the Black producer/curator’s role as performer themselves. With a view that these positions offer generative sites for nurturing imagined possibilities.

Yewande’s practice raises a set of unique questions. What is built into a language, labour and history of Black performance? How can the body’s ability to communicate help us think about specific practices and provisions needed for Black creatives to exist, thrive, and bring their ideas into public space?

Yewande YoYo Odunubi, image credit: Darryl Daley