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Areas of Focus
Artists
Edited: June 28, 2023
Iyapo Repository (With Salome Asega & Ayodamola Okunseinde)
Current location
New York,NY
Year(s) of residency and/or fellowship
2015–16, Resident
Members
Ayodamola Okunseinde, Salome Asega

Iyapo Repository is a future resource library that houses a collection of digital and physical artifacts created to affirm and project the African diaspora.

It offers opportunities for people of African descent to generate and build technological cultural artifacts of their future. The project is situated between physical and digital spaces, between the present and the future.

It asks us to reimagine notions of race, identity & culture through technological artifacts as they travel through time & space.

 

This work was exhibited at Eyebeam’s former space in Industry City, in a group exhibition, titled “To Scale” from May 14th – 26th, 2016.

Eyebeam opened its studios to the public for a two-week show of recent projects exploring concepts of scale. These projects, the result of six months of research, share an ability to switch with ease from the view up close to the distant perspective.

Whether shifting scale through physical size, optical resolution, biological complexity or political organizing, they show that reality can seem totally different depending on context or even viewpoint. The world is not flat, but round like a lens.

About Collaborators

Salome Asega (she/her)

Salome Asega is an artist, researcher, and educator working between participatory design and emerging technology.

Asega believes in leveraging the power of collective imagination to redistribute power, change culture, and shift policy.

Before joining the NEW INC team in 2021, she worked at the Ford Foundation as a Technology Fellow supporting artists and organizations in the new media arts ecosystem. Salome has participated in residencies and fellowships with Eyebeam, The Laundromat Project, and Recess and has exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale, MoMA, Carnegie Library, August Wilson Center, Knockdown Center, and more. Since 2015, Salome has been teaching studio and design methodology courses in the MFA Design and Technology program at Parsons School of Design.

She currently sits on the board of Eyebeam.

Ayodamola Okunseinde (he/him)

Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde (ayo) is a Nigerian-American artist, designer, anthropologist and time-traveler living and working in New York.

He studied Visual Arts and Philosophy at Rutgers University where he earned his B.A. His works range from painting and speculative design to physically interactive works, wearable technology, and explorations of “Reclamation”. His residency participation includes ITP’s S.I.R., IDEO’s Fortnight, The Laundromat Project, Eyebeam, New INC, and Recess Assembly. He has exhibited and presented at the 11th Shanghai Biennale, Tribeca Storyscapes, EYEO Festival, Brooklyn Museum, M.I.T. Beyond the Cradle, and Afrotectopia amongst others.

Okunseinde was the co-founder and creative director of Dissident Display Studios, an award winning studio and art gallery based in Washington DC. As a collaborator with, amongst others, choreographer Maida Withers, Carmen Wong, and Yoko K., Okunseinde has created several interactive performance based works and has performed in several countries including Mexico, Finland, and Croatia. He is the co-founder and Director of Iyapo Repository, a resource library that exists in a nondescript future that was founded to collect and preserve artifacts to ensure the history and legacy of people of African descent.

Okunseinde was nominated for the 2021 inaugural Knight Art + Tech Fellowship and is a 2021 fellow of the Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography & Social Thought. His works exist between physical and digital spaces; across the past, present and future. Okunseinde’s works ask us, via a technological lens, to reimagine notions of race, identity, politics, and culture as we travel through time and space. Okunseinde has taught at multiple institutions including New York University, Bennington College, and Hostos CUNY. He holds an M.F.A. in Design and Technology and an M.A. in Anthropology from The New School. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and serves as an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design at Parsons School of Design.

Eyebeam models a new approach to artist-led creation for the public good; we are a non-profit that provides significant professional support and money to exceptional artists for the realization of important ideas that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Nobody else is doing this.

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