SLOW | Wey Dey Move: Remember Dancing Cosmologies

An exhibition by Dele Adeyemo, curated by Micol Curatolo at the Museum of Impossible Forms, opens on 9 October 2025.

Wey Dey Move: Remember Dancing Cosmologies | Dele Adeyemo

An exhibition by Dele Adeyemo, curated by Micol Curatolo

9.10.-9.11.2025
Museum of Impossible Forms,  Aallonhalkoja 9 L1, 00540 Helsinki

Opening 9.10. at 17:00-20:00
Thu-Fri 14:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-16:00

Wey dey move is a Nigerian Pidgin term said to describe the way things constantly shift, as different bodies intersect and circulate, drawing the outlines of places in a complex choreography. 

While the process of urbanisation in West Africa rapidly unfolds, sand, people, waters and ecologies are in constant flux along the Nigerian coast. 

On a watery edge of Lagos, the residents of the indigenous settlement of Oworonshoki live the rhythms of endurance of the lagoon and are intersected by the extractive processes of real estate development that voraciously dredge sand from the waterbed for urban expansion. 

A group of young people in Oworonshoki finds in dance a space of resistance and political expression. Their rehearsals echo native rituals carried by their ancestors from inland settlements like the ancient city of Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Dancing, they perform lifeworlds where the individual exists in connection to the collective, combining natural, social, and spiritual lifeworlds. 

Between colonial infrastructures and the ruins of petro-capitalism, urban theorist and artist Dele Adeyemo portrays the existence of this other worldview: the ancestral memory of a cosmology that people enact by performing their ecological and social relations through dance.

If colonialism fractured and dis-membered the African social body, as novelist Tim Morrison first and philosopher Achille Mbembe later describe, to re-member is a process of putting back together its disparate parts. The subtitle of the exhibition, Remember Dancing Cosmologies, describes how the works on show invite healing and repair through the engagement with embodied knowledges that are archived in movement practices. 

In the shadow of the mangrove forests and in the cyclical life of the lagoon, the community portrayed by Adeyemo creates a place outside the logics of European colonisation as they continue to rehearse a choreography of refusal and re-membrance. 

The exhibition is part of SLOW – Seasonal Laboratories for Other Worlds, a series of exhibitionary workspaces for collective laboring and alternative connections between bodies, places, and economies through art. Curated by Micol Curatolo with the Museum of Impossible Forms.

Dele Adeyemo is a Scottish / Nigerian artist, architect, and critical urban theorist based in London and Lagos. Dele’s research and creative practice address the architectures of racial capitalism and the contemporary lifeworlds that exist in their midst. Paying tribute to the radical acts of everyday Black life in Africa and the diaspora through drawing, film, sculpture and installation design, Dele’s projects trace the contours of Black socialities through their embodied cultures of movement and their circulation to mobilise what he calls—the Black radical spatial imaginary. Dele’s works have been exhibited at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), the 13th International Architecture Biennale of Sao Paulo (2022), the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial (2020), and the 2nd Edition of the Lagos Biennial (2019). Most recently he has presented the solo exhibitions, Licor-Mãe (2023) at Sismógrafo, Porto; Residues of the Sweet Purge (2023) at Capel da Boa Viagem Funchal; and Wey Dey Move (2022) at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam.

Program

11 October 2025, 16:30-17:30
Remember Dancing Cosmologies: Dele Adeyemo in conversation with Micol Curatolo
Online | Register at this link

Dele Adeyemo joins us online to expand on the research behind his works on show at Wey Dey Move. 

At the intersection of everyday resistance, embodied knowledge, and Black radical thinking, Adeyemo formulates what he calls ‘the Black radical spatial imaginary’. Within a geography shaped by the historical infrastructures of colonialism, Adeyemo portrays the possibilities of a different spatiality performed through dance and indigenous spirituality amongst the architectures of racial capitalism. 

18 October 2025, 10:30-12:30
Dance workshop with Ama Kyei
Museum of Impossible Forms | Sign up at this link 

Inspired by the films in the exhibition, Ama Kyei leads a dance workshop focused on finding moments of flow, belonging and a sense of togetherness. The group will groove closely together, attuning and dancing like a school of fish. They will also have the opportunity to connect with dancer and choreographer Hermes Chibueze Iyele, who performed and choreographed some of the works in the exhibition.

The workshop is a space for BIPOC people interested in dance and movement practices.

Visitors are welcome to the exhibition at 12:00 to witness the last part of the workshop!

22 October 2025, 17:30-18:30
Visit Lagos Studio Archives
Kaapelitehdas, Kaapeliaukio 3, Helsinki

Join us for a studio visit to Lagos Studio Archives in Cable Factory, where Karl Ohiri and Riikka Kassinen will open their photographic archives consisting of thousands of film negatives documenting studio portraiture and vernacular photography from Lagos, Nigeria, from the 1970s to post millennium. The initiative collects and preserves the imagery of photographers that captured the style, humour and aspirations of everyday Lagosians, presenting their contributions to Nigerian photographic history. 

The meeting point is at 17:20 in the courtyard of Cable Factory

CREDITS

Artworks and design by Dele Adeyemo

Curated and produced by Micol Curatolo

Co-produced by Valge Kupp Studio

Public program with Lagos Studio Archives (Karl Ohiri & Riikka Kassinen) and Ama Kyei

Woodwork by Paul Flanders

AV equipment by NASHA and Kunstventures

Thanks to the community of Oworonshoki, Giovanna Esposito Yussif, Berit Teeäär, Jaana Jüris, Hermes Chibueze Iyele, Jesse Ukkonen, Teemu Lehmusruusu, Andre Vicentini, Wanda Holopainen

Supported by Kone Foundation