Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju: BloodLetter

BloodLetter is the first institutional solo exhibition by the Nigerian-American artist Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju. At its heart is the artist’s book of the same name, a handcrafted leather-bound work made specifically for the show at the Kestner Gesellschaft. This book forms the conceptual core of the exhibition and embodies key motifs that shape the artist’s practice: ancestry, memory, grief, healing, and the complex connection between individual and collective narratives.

Serving as much more than a collection of texts, BloodLetter functions as a personal archive. Poems, essays, letters, and journal entries address questions of identity, belonging, and migration: autobiographical reflections intertwine with universal themes including intergenerational trauma, familial ties, and cultural transformation. The book is presented in the exhibition within a specially designed installation made of clay elements called “breeze blocks,” inspired by the cement blocks used by her grandfather in the construction of his home. This pavilion creates an intimate space within the exhibition itself, both protective and porous, while also highlighting the artist’s book as both a physical and conceptual center of the exhibition.

The exhibition focuses on Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju’s large-scale paintings on leather and small sculptures made of birch, whose symbols and personal motifs expand the thematic range of the exhibition. Ilupeju combines painting, installations, and text in her practice, making visible the fractures and overlays of memory through unconventional media and surfaces modified with scratch marks and pyrographic techniques. Her works link personal and collective narratives, questioning traditional archiving while opening spaces where stories can be told in depth. In particular, the relationships with her family and thoughts on homeland and diaspora are a common thread throughout her works.

The title BloodLetter refers on one hand to the central role of blood as a metaphor in Ilupeju’s work. For the artist, blood signifies life, connection, trauma, and the transmission of stories. On the other hand, “Letter” points to recorded written and spoken language, asemic writing, the documentation and reshaping of narratives. Together, the interplay of these ideas creates an artistic concept that explores the relationship between body, language, and history.

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju (b. 1996) is a multimedia artist and writer. In her paintings, texts, performances, and installations, she balances her own experiences of connection, violence, and healing with broader considerations of cultural distortions and identity. Ilupeju lives and works in Berlin.

Curator: Alexander Wilmschen