Videos + Films – Adéọlá Ọlágúnjú

Ayọ̀ [ Joy ] Film

In the shadow of life's ongoing struggle, a different kind of revolution blooms: the revolution of shared joy. Told through the lens of a mother and her son, Ayọ̀ [Joy] presents communal joy as "post-activism;" a vital, sustained practice of cultivating hope. The story follows Salewa and Segun as they discover that connection and celebration, fostered through dance and food amidst their longings for socio-economic and political change, are not mere distractions but the very wellspring of resilience. It reveals how the intentional cultivation of shared joy sustains hope itself.

ÌYÁBỌ̀

Intermediation

This video explores dance as a language for communicating lived, embodied experience. It reveals how bodily knowledge connects a person to their environment. This connection is not merely about moving through space, but about perceiving how that space, in turn, shapes and influences the mover. To dance is to initiate a cascade of transformations. These shifts flow through the body as sensory awakenings, unpredictable progressions, and wordless somatic expression. Thus, the physical body transforms into a channel, making the intangible and affective dimensions of existence tangibly known.

Liminal Spaces

This video work engages with an abandoned structure in the city of Gelsenkirchen, focusing on the significations of space during a period of in-betweenness. I am particularly interested in the reciprocal relationship between the decaying architectural body and its transient occupants, and I ponder the attributes of each that forge this connection. I reflect on the process through which a building, divested of its normative identity, transforms into a malleable site that hosts and reflects individual subjectivities. Central to this video exploration is the concept of abjection, providing a lens to look at architectural decline, liminal states, and the kinaesthetic interaction of human and spatial bodies.

Pilgrimage

The metaphor "life is a journey" endures as a timeless convention, drawing its vitality from humanity's primal experiences of space and time. Since the dawn of consciousness, people have walked, migrated, and ventured across landscapes, framing their existence in terms of movement: quests, voyages, pilgrimages, exiles, wanderings, homecomings, and sojourns. These motifs reflect not only physical travel but also the existential arc of human life, a narrative of departure, transformation, and the ceaseless pursuit of meaning.

Pilgrimage (2018) is a profound allegory for the individual's search for the sacred or the Self. It is a journey that begins with a rupture, a deliberate detachment from the familiar rhythms of daily life, which propels the pilgrim into a state of ambiguity. Stripped of conventional social roles, the pilgrim assumes an "outsider" status, suspended in a liminal space where identity dissolves and transformation becomes possible. In this threshold, the blurred boundaries between past and future, Self and other are navigated, grounding the journey as much in introspection as in physical progress.

Yet, unlike structured religious traditions that often culminate in a sacred destination or divine revelation, the metaphorical journey of life lacks a fixed endpoint. Instead, it unfolds as a dual motion: an outward traversal of the world's vastness and an inward descent into the depths of the psyche. The pilgrim oscillates between motion and stillness, belonging and exile, discovery and loss. In this eternal intermesh, the journey itself becomes the destination, a paradox that mirrors life's unanswerable questions and its relentless, open-ended becoming.

Interstices

This two-channel video presents the human body as a terrain vague: an undefined space of possibility. Set within the rhythmic pulse of Lagos's railway commutes, it observes the everyday journey. Here, the steel and concrete of transit infrastructure meet the intimate mindscape of the traveler. In moments of waiting and daydreaming, feelings arise: anxiety, boredom, euphoria. Through the quiet act of passage between public and private realms, the body itself creates its own geography. These are the spaces we move through, which in turn move through us, continuously shaping and reshaping our experience of the city.

Ẹsẹ̀ Gìrì Gìrì (Clusters)

We have been here before.

The sun rises, sets and hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south, north, here and there twisting back and forth. The rivers runs into the sea, the sea is never full.

No matter how much we see the eyes are never satisfied.

I apply myself to search for an understanding of the trails set or left behind; the rush, the runs, the waiting, the fall, and the journeys to the unknown made by our feet.

History merely repeats itself.

“Ese Giri Giri - Clusters” is an expression of my encounters, interests, curiosities and personality.

Time passes, generations go, others come - the earth remains. The endless wearisome cycle repeats itself. We, like the river roll and keep rolling. The end of all our exploration brings us back to the beginning.

Back where we started.