Proto-Farm Communities (What if we get it right?)

SPACE Gallery is thrilled to present the work of Olalekan Jeyifous in the SPACE Window Gallery curated by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. This artist is featured in the new book What if We Get It Right? and part of Johnson’s curatorial project “Climate Futurism” which began at Pioneer Works in 2023. SPACE will be celebrating the Maine launch of the book with a coalition of environmental organizations on October 25th at Hannaford Hall.

Jeyifous’s newly commissioned works are an extension of his project Frozen Neighborhoods, which reimagines Brooklyn from the 1990s — speculative futurisms set within an alternate American history timeline in which the government took an active role to combat climate change.

From Dr. Johnson’s book:

“What if, back in the 1980s when climate science started offering warnings of where we were headed, we had begun to put far-reaching policies in place? The following works offer a protozoan, sustainable community in ’90s Brooklyn — a future that is, as Olalekan puts it, ‘decolonized, decarbonized, draped up, and dripped out.’ These photo montages posit a variety of advanced green technologies for the production and dissemination of food, seeds, and freshwater, set within an alternate world in which the government combats climate change through a market-based system of ‘mobility credits’ that curtail movement of the poor and working classes. Olalekan imagines a fugitive network of farming societies he refers to as the ‘Proto-Farm Communities of Upstate New York” (PFCs). These works build upon a vision of resilience and resistance that references the tradition of maroon communities, recast through the lens of an Afrofuturist, ecological, and solar-punk-meets-salvage-punk world brimming with Black joy.”

Olalekan Jeyifous (b. 1977) received a BArch from Cornell University and is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work re-imagines social spaces that examine the relationships between architecture, community, and the environment. He has exhibited at esteemed venues including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Vitra Design Museum, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, and the Museum of Modern Art, where his artwork is featured in the permanent collection of the Department of Architecture and Design. In addition to an extensive exhibition history, Olalekan has spent over a decade creating large-scale installations for a variety of public spaces and was co-commissioned to design a monument for congresswoman Shirley Chisholm as part of the City of New York’s “She Built NYC” initiative. Olalekan has garnered numerous awards, including the notable Silver Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Additionally, he is a recipient of the 2021 Fellowship by the United States Artists and has been a Wilder Green Fellow at the MacDowell Colony and completed artist residencies at the Bellagio Center, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions program.