On Tuesday, 14 April 2026, 6 p.m., Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju will give a lecture on dust as material, archive, and witness in relation to her performance project "Wayward Dust". Location: Room 103/104, Villa, Campus Design, Neuwerk 7, 06108 Halle (Saale)

The talk reflects on a 2020 intervention at the Deutsches Technikmuseum developed in collaboration with Dekoloniale, in which she collected seventeen years of accumulated dust from a controversial slave trade installation that has since been dismantled. Ilupeju approaches dust as a dense textile assemblage composed of fibers, skin cells, hair, soil, pollen, and microscopic debris, revealing how bodies, fabrics, and environments continuously shed and intertwine. In her lecture, she considers how these particles function as tactile records of presence and as reminders of the ways historical narratives are constructed, maintained, and undone. The session invites students to rethink material practice, decay, and regeneration, and to consider what it means to work with residues that both expose violent histories and open new potentials for repair and reimagining.

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju is a Nigerian-American artist and writer based in Berlin. Working across painting, writing, performance and installation, she balances intimate experiences of connection, violence, and healing against broader considerations of cultural distortion and identity. She graduated with distinction from New York University, where she studied studio art and social and cultural analysis. She is also an alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and BPA// Berlin program for artists. Her debut collection of writing, Earnestly, was published in 2022 by Archive Books. 

Recent solo exhibitions and presentations include The Wishing Well, Art Basel: Statements, PSM, Basel, Switzerland (2025), Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju: BloodLetter, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany (2024), BloodLetter, PSM, Berlin, Germany (2024), Saint V., Tarte Vienna, Vienna (2023),  Gymnasia, A plus A Gallery, Venice (2023),  Hands Full of Air, Galerie im Turm, Berlin (2020); and Eve of Intuition, The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER), Berlin (2020). Ilupeju has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including A place never fully held, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2025), Musafiri: Travellers and Guests, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2025), edging—bodies without orgasms, Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt, Austria (2025), Genius Loci: Notes on Places, Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Ludwigshafen, Germany (2025), Twilight is a Place of Promise, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Germany (2024), Politics of Love, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg (2024), non playable character, School for Curatorial Studies Venice & The Fairest, Venice (2022), and my whole body changed into something else, Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg (2021), 

In August 2026, Ilupeju will present a new body of work in the group exhibition everybody at Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin.