Oluwatobiloba Ajayi was born in Amsterdam and raised between Gran Canaria, Amsterdam, Budapest, Lagos, and London. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Princeton University and is currently completing her Masters in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art. As an artist, writer, scholar, and curator, Tobi’s research prioritizes the spatial practice of Black women.

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I have found a home in printmaking: a medium that gives grace to a manifold of spatiotemporal patterns. Printmaking holds an abundance of internal contradictions; it is both fast and slow, urgent and patient, subtractive and additive. These contradictions allow me to work iteratively, accruing layers of ink on my plates and working them to exhaustion. The residual plate of a trace print might become a reductive monoprint which is then layered with family photographs and relief prints into my digital compositions. The work is able to eat itself. My trace prints and prints of traces explore memory, rememory, and personal histories. I seek to reflect on my diasporic lineage, the mythical essence of home, as well as the spaces of conversation within my network. My use of print thus references both material and imagined spaces.

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