A event held at Spike Island on Saturday 31st January. The event starts at 12:00.
Spike Island presents 'Feedback' (31 January to 10 May 2026), the largest solo exhibition by Nigerian-British artist, filmmaker, and DJ Olukemi Lijadu. Developed through extensive research in Chicago, Lagos and Bristol, 'Feedback' centres around a major film commission and marks a landmark in the artist’s moving image practice.
The film draws on the concept of audio feedback as a metaphor for the circulation of rhythm, memory, and cultural codes within the African diaspora. Audio feedback—the loop where sound cycles between output and input, amplifying itself—becomes a way to understand how cultures, stories, and histories reverberate across continents and generations. The drum, both as a physical instrument and as a symbol of rhythmic connection, beats the film’s time. Tracing its evolution from traditional West African drumming traditions to electronic drum machines, 'Feedback' highlights how the drum functions as a structural and spiritual backbone of communal gathering.
Lijadu traces the legacy of West African music on electronic music, investigating how the process of looping underpins not only music but also collective memory and (dis)connection. Her research spans sites crucial to Black culture: from Chicago music festivals to the beaches of Lagos, with nods to Bristol’s African-Caribbean heritage. A sound system completes the film installation, functioning both as a mode of display and as a physical metaphor for the amplification of histories, voices and vibrations. Drawing from Bristol’s famous sound system culture, this sculptural element emphasises the connections forged by the artist during her research residencies in the city.
Inspired by early abstract cinema, 'Feedback' embraces repetition, tempo, and visual rhythm as cinematic devices. It also complicates and subverts this vocabulary, allowing the artist to appropriate the legacy of a Western-centric art history.
PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS
The exhibition is generously supported by The Elephant Trust and the Olukemi Lijadu Commissioning Circle: Frank Dupuis and Ms. Bimpe Nkontchou.
This exhibition is open at Spike Island until Sunday 10 May 2026
Spike Island is open every Wednesday to Sunday, 12–5pm. Free entry
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Image credits: Olukemi Lijadu, 'Feedback' works in progress (2026). Courtesy the artist
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
The film draws on the concept of audio feedback as a metaphor for the circulation of rhythm, memory, and cultural codes within the African diaspora. Audio feedback—the loop where sound cycles between output and input, amplifying itself—becomes a way to understand how cultures, stories, and histories reverberate across continents and generations. The drum, both as a physical instrument and as a symbol of rhythmic connection, beats the film’s time. Tracing its evolution from traditional West African drumming traditions to electronic drum machines, 'Feedback' highlights how the drum functions as a structural and spiritual backbone of communal gathering.
Lijadu traces the legacy of West African music on electronic music, investigating how the process of looping underpins not only music but also collective memory and (dis)connection. Her research spans sites crucial to Black culture: from Chicago music festivals to the beaches of Lagos, with nods to Bristol’s African-Caribbean heritage. A sound system completes the film installation, functioning both as a mode of display and as a physical metaphor for the amplification of histories, voices and vibrations. Drawing from Bristol’s famous sound system culture, this sculptural element emphasises the connections forged by the artist during her research residencies in the city.
Inspired by early abstract cinema, 'Feedback' embraces repetition, tempo, and visual rhythm as cinematic devices. It also complicates and subverts this vocabulary, allowing the artist to appropriate the legacy of a Western-centric art history.
PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS
The exhibition is generously supported by The Elephant Trust and the Olukemi Lijadu Commissioning Circle: Frank Dupuis and Ms. Bimpe Nkontchou.
This exhibition is open at Spike Island until Sunday 10 May 2026
Spike Island is open every Wednesday to Sunday, 12–5pm. Free entry
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Image credits: Olukemi Lijadu, 'Feedback' works in progress (2026). Courtesy the artist
Entry requirements: no age restrictions