Duchamp & Sons with Ayo Akingbade

Project (Jan – Sep 2020)

Are the thoughts surrounding home, universal?

Duchamp & Sons work with artist and filmmaker Ayo Akingbade (b.1994, London) on a six-month project investigating ideas of place and belonging. Akingbade makes moving image work that explores diasporic identities, housing and psychogeography. Her work gives voice to the concerns of first and second-generation migrants living in London.

Through workshops, gallery visits, fieldwork in the local area and Zoom meetings, the group has been tracing memories of displacement and the meaning of home, interrogating present challenges and future aspirations How has this neighbourhood changed over the past 20 years? What does home mean? How do you come to feel part of a community? How is gentrification affecting the area? These questions prompted interviews amongst the group and with shopkeepers, TFL workers and passers-by. Dialogues were recorded on mobile phones and captured in writing. Their explorations echo the multifaceted and uncertain times we live in.

The project culminates with a new film commission by Akingbade to be presented at Whitechapel Gallery in April 2021. Titled Fire In My Belly (2021) the film offers a compelling portrait of London through the voices of young people and creative professionals as they navigate an uncharted road map of the city.