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Ayo

@studio__ayo

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🔛@kunstinstituutmelly 🔛 @garagerotterdam Resident @rijksakademie
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There is something in a voice that no recording can truly hold. AYO is currently participating in an exhibition, Draw Withdraw, Redraw @kunstinstituutmelly with her installation and iterative performances, Endless Poetry (I’m forgetting the sound of her voice), 2026. Within this constellation of mouth-blown glass and electronics, sound is not simply played back but continuously produced, passed between objects, reshaped by the room, and revised with each rotation. Relations unfold between object and object, body and room, remembrance and rupture. A motor-driven microphone arm rotates in continuous circular motion, tracing invisible acoustic paths through space. In doing so, it draws sound from the sculptures, repeatedly revising and reshaping their sonic presence. Over the span of the exhibition, AYO and collaborators will vary the set-up with scores, repetition, and acoustic feedback. “I think of the installation as a question about what survives translation — and what, in the forgetting, remains.” — AYO Photo credits: Cedrick Veldhuis (installation) & @cyborgtruffel (Performance) With thanks: @lil_sunchoke @mauriciovander @seamus.cater , Rene Blits & Stephan Kundera @kunstinstituutmelly Team at large 🤲🏿(@gabi_ngcobo_official @thehoneytoast @alicia_gro ) by @studio__ayo
Saturday 19 September, during @grootrotterdamsatelierweekend, AYO’s installation ‘A Score for Atat’s Homestead’ will be activated in a performance by Phantom Wizard. ⊹ 𝘼 𝙎𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝘼𝙩𝙖𝙩’𝙨 𝙃𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙙 Performance by @studio__ayo, performed by @phantom.wizard Witness an intimate rendition of AYO’s A Score for Atat’s Homestead at Garage Rotterdam, currently on view as part of 𝘼𝙣 𝙀𝙮𝙚 𝘿𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙪𝙣, performed by composer and improviser Phantom Wizard under AYO’s artistic direction. In her work, AYO explores how sound can make hidden histories and a lost homeland audible. During the performance, sculptures, field recordings, instruments and live improvisation come together, giving personal and collective memories form through sound. The Abu, AYO’s glass interpretation of a traditional Luo wind instrument, also takes on a new sonic dimension within the performance. In this way, the installation becomes a living, shared memory. AYO is a Kampala-raised, Rotterdam-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, sound, performance, and film. Through time-based and collaborative works, she researches how intangible cultural heritage – language, memory, oral transmission, Indigenous knowledge systems – presses against and enters material forms, opening rooms where histories are enlivened, shared, and at times, misunderstood. Phantom Wizard (b. 1998, Amsterdam) is a composer and improviser whose work dissolves boundaries and reimagines traditions. Phantom Wizard blends natural soundscapes, the sonorities of Afro-diasporic music, experimental electronics and the many ancient traditions sourced from the Surinamese melting pot. 📍 Garage Rotterdam ⊹ Saturday 19 September, 20:00 ✦ Free entry 📷 1,2: Aad Hoogendoorn 3: Tom Philip Janssen 4: Fidelio Faustino. by @studio__ayo
What does it mean to carry a language the body knows before the mind names it? To hold memory in a form that may not survive translation? AYO (UG/NL) is a Kampala-raised, Rotterdam-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, sound, performance, and film. She approaches artist-hood as a daily process: plural, durational, built through long-term research, making, and listening — moving fluidly between conceptual inquiry and material experimentation, between what can be held and what resists form. Through time-based and collaborative works, she researches how intangible cultural heritage — language, memory, oral transmission, Indigenous knowledge systems — presses against and enters material forms, opening rooms where histories are enlivened, shared, and at times, misunderstood. Credits: 📷 1 Christijn Groeneveld 📷 4 Patty Van den Elshout 📷 5&6 Francoise Belochowski 📷 7 Nadine Stijns 📷 8 Patty van den Elshout #AYO #ArtistInResidence #Rijksakademie #ArtResidency #ResidentArtist by @studio__ayo
💐18:00 FRIDAY February 27th💐 Join us for the opening reception of Sustaining the Otherwise: Practicing Freedom and Refusal at Metro54. We’ll open with a performance by one of the exhibiting artists: AYO, @studio__ayo ‘A score for Atat’s homestead’ followed by a warm welcome to the space. Join us to celebrate, drinks and snacks will be provided! Christine 'AYO' is a Kampala-raised, Rotterdam-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, sound, performance, and film. AYO approaches artist-hood as a daily process of plural world-building. Through time-based and collaborative works, AYO researches how intangible cultural heritage —including language, customs, indigenous knowledge, among others — can come into dialogue with material forms, shaping sites where histories are enlivened, shared, or misunderstood. Practicing Freedom and Refusal unfolds as part of Sustaining the Otherwise, a collective and ongoing inquiry into how we might live, think and create otherwise, within and against the enduring structures of coloniality. We’re delighted to present an incredible array of works from artists Ayo (@studio__ayo), Masimba Hwati (@masimbahwati), Christian Nyampeta (@christiannyampeta), Adeju Thompson (@lagosspaceprogramme), and Helena Uambembe (@uambembe). The works are positioned as distinctly shaped by the nuances and complexities of the dual action of practicing freedom and refusal. 🔥Date: Friday 27th February 🔥Time: 18:00 - 21:00 🔥Location: Westerdoksdijk 597, 🔥Please RSVP, link in bio and website by @studio__ayo
My DIY art film made it to @iffr 🙏🏿 Many thanks to everyone who touched the project and came to witness it last week. You know who you are ❣️ Also massive appreciation to @lyse_ishimwe1 for facilitating a beautiful gathering @kunstinstituutmelly for African filmmakers 🙌🏿 If you haven’t seen SO(N)R yet there are two screenings left: 📽️ Friday 6th Feb | Pathé 3 I 20:30 📽️ Saturday 7th Feb | Podium Islemunda (filmzaal) by @studio__ayo
#Rijksakademie resident AYO @studio__ayo will be showcasing her film SO(N)R @IFFR 2026 in the following screening program: Echoes of perception 30 Jan 2026 12:00 LantarenVenster 2 30 Jan 2026 16:15 LantarenVenster 4 6 Feb 2026 20:30 Pathé 3 7 Feb 2026 10:00 Podium Islemunda - Filmzaal Short Film Marathon 7 Feb 2026 11:45 KINO 1 In SO(N)R, multidisciplinary artist AYO reimagines the voice and form of Abu —a Luo gourd instrument once used to announce death. Sounds produced with glass renditions of Abu in AYO’s studio in the Netherlands intertwine with 8mm films portraying life in 1960s East Africa, creating an enigmatic meditation of time and memory across geographies. With thanks: Yanik Soland (sonic composition), Marta Hryniuk & Nick Thomas (Camera), Gert Bullée (glass fabrication), Mondriaan Fonds & North Norwegian Art Centre. by @studio__ayo
Glass kiln casting experiments based on my ancestral Odero (winnower) 🪭🌾 by @studio__ayo
Some textile research materialities for a floor piece 1. 📸 Patty van den Elshout at Textile lab Tilburg. Eternally grateful to @judithpeskens for her technical prowess! More info tba. by @studio__ayo
AYO’s work has recently been shaped by obsolete Indigenous objects, reimagining them as carriers of cultures and belonging. Led by instrumental sounds, AYO explores how they can connect us beyond the limits of language. In SO(N)R, the artist experiments with sonic scores that are transmitted through glass-blown and hand-fabricated sculptures which resemble the Abu – an ancestral wind instrument that is frequently used in commemorative functions by the Luo peoples in Uganda. SO(N)R (2025), AYO. Photographs: @aadhoogendoorn Wild Summer of Art - On view until August 24, 2025. by @studio__ayo
by @studio__ayo
I finally have a studio portrait thanks to @christijngroeneveld ✨✨✨ Much appreciation to everyone who witnessed “a score for atat’s homestead” at @rijksakademie open studios last week 🙌🏿 📷 2 &4 Tomek Dersu Aaron by @studio__ayo
AYO’s work is on the 2nd floor. We are open until 21.00 today (Friday)! Discover her work, and that of the other 50 artists during Open Studios, until 25 May. #raopenstudios2025 #studioayo #ayo #rijksakademie by @studio__ayo

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