Artist Merryn Omotayo Alaka, photo credit: Shaunté Glover
The Creative Edit: Merryn Omotayo Alaka
Posing short questions to new emerging contemporary artists and creatives, we take an informal yet quick and engaging view of their creative practice. Viewers get to discover more about the new generation of artists + creatives helping shape and narrate the creative landscape.
"How many times do we have to mark this vessel for it to remember what it is?" - 2024, Cast bronze headrest, sugar edge comb, sugar wise monkeys, Himalayan salt
About Merryn Omotayo Alaka
Merryn Omotayo Alaka (b. 1997, Indianapolis, Indiana) is a Nigerian and American artist whose work spans across sculpture, installation, performance, and fiber practices. Her interdisciplinary sculptural practice incorporates metal fabrication, bronze casting, fiber, found objects, sound, and ready-made materials. Using materials and objects as a form of "allegory" or symbolism, Alaka examines the constructs and fluidness of blackness, time, memory, and history– ideas that have been shaped by societal structures and colonial histories. Alaka's creative practice explores how Black diasporic histories and traditions are preserved across generations, oftentimes working with materials and processes that serve as vessels for collective memory.
Alaka locates her work at the intersection of Black material culture, family archives, and West African mythologies. Reconstructing found and inherited objects and textiles such as Mercedes Benz car parts, Yoruba Agbadas, Nigerian leather mats, and African headrests along with stories true and imagined, she creates visual language and landscapes that make space for contemplation and meditation.
At its core, Alaka’s creative practice offers up a critical space for the sharing and exchange of narratives, histories, and futures that are in a constant state of flux.
Alaka will graduate in spring of 2025 with a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited work at institutions such as the Phoenix Art Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington. She is the recipient of a fully funded scholarship from the School of the Art Institute and in 2022 was awarded the emerging artist grant from the Phoenix Art Museum. Alaka is an upcoming fellow at the Studios of Mass MoCA in the fall of 2025.
Artist Statement
My interdisciplinary sculptural practice incorporates metal fabrication, bronze casting, fiber, found objects, sound, and ready-made materials. Mixing the synthetic and artificial with the natural and organic, I challenge western views of cultural authenticity in Black and African culture — traditions, knowledge, shared objects/materials, craft processes, and labor — many of which are hybrid identities shaped by mass production, capitalism, consumerism, cultural exchange and migration. I locate my work at the intersection of Black material culture, family archives, and West African mythologies. Reconstructing found and inherited objects and textiles such as Mercedes Benz car parts, Yoruba Agbadas, Nigerian leather mats, and African headrests along with stories true and imagined, I create visual language and landscapes that make space for contemplation and meditation.
I consider myself a conduit who channels ancestral knowledge and intuition fostering collaboration across time, between past and future generations. I’m curious about the histories of the Black diaspora and the ways they are preserved and reproduced.I use repetition of cultural motifs, objects, patterns, colors, and sounds to serve as a metaphor for the continual passing down of intergenerational imagery and stories found across the Black diaspora. I believe that materials and processes can act as vessels for collective narratives. Using materials and objects as a form of "allegory" or symbolism, I examine the constructs and fluidness of blackness, time, memory, and history– ideas that have been shaped by societal structures and colonial histories.
How many times do we have to mark this vessel for it to remember what it is? — 2024, cast bronze headrest, sugar edge comb, sugar wise monkeys, Himalayan salt (detail)
Describe when you were first introduced to art and what mediums you like to work in.
Some of my first introductions to art came from the artwork that decorated my childhood home. None of my immediate family members were artists, but I can point to a few formative experiences that shaped me. My dad was a huge appreciator of the arts. He collected a lot of sculptures, paintings, and photographs from Nigeria, so our home was often decorated with hand-carved wooden and beaded face masks, leather-hide Nigerian mats, and beautiful oil paintings from West African artists. Growing up around these works definitely left an impression on me, and I often recall them in my current artistic practice.
My mom is a crafter and a DIY engineer in her own right, so I have many early memories of making crafts at home with her using whatever materials we had lying around. She firmly believes in giving new life to secondhand materials, so a lot of our crafts were made from things around the house or items we found at neighborhood garage sales.
During my late elementary and middle school years, I spent some of my summers with my Aunt Phoenix in Salt Lake City. She was the first artist I ever consciously knew, and I remember always looking up to her. I have vivid memories of her bringing me to art galleries and museums, as well as visiting the studios of her artist friends, whether they were in garages or shared studio spaces. Experiencing these creative environments at such a formative age definitely opened my eyes to the possibility of having a professional art career or practice.
As I began taking art more seriously in my late high school years and early undergraduate studies, I explored photography, collage, drawing, printmaking, fibers, and jewelry. Today, much of my practice incorporates materials that are easily accessible and often shifts as I explore different conceptual projects. I view myself as an interdisciplinary sculptural artist, working with mediums such as fibers, casting, performance, sound, found objects, and ready-made materials. Recently, my materials have ranged from bronze casting and vinyl to sugar and salt.
In several of your series, I love how you incorporate Kanekalon hair along with motifs of hair accessories and tools. Hair is so personal for many of us, what is your relationship like with your hair?
Yes! I have explored hair in a myriad of ways throughout my practice. One of my more extensive explorations has been through my collaborative practice with artist Sam Frésquez, Hairland—an ever-expanding speculative landscape where hair has the regenerative capability to grow into entire ecological systems. We’ve used our work as a way to offer an alternative to existing societal hierarchies and value systems. Hairland has been an ongoing collaborative practice since 2017, and we’ve playfully and critically used science fiction as a tool to challenge the social expectations, realities, and histories we live within.
In my personal projects, I’ve incorporated both synthetic and real hair to explore ancestral lineages, themes of ritual, and hair as an extension of the body. My relationship with my hair is deeply personal—it feels intrinsically connected to my identity and how I navigate the environments I exist in. I believe that through my hair, my ancestors live on, and by engaging with it in my art, I serve as a conduit, channeling ancestral intuition and generational knowledge.
The incorporation of hair allows me to create both a reference to and a metaphor for the body. While I have never worked figuratively in my practice, I believe my work frequently calls upon the body—specifically Black bodies. Oftentimes, hair is embedded into materials or objects as a means of creating barriers of protection or vessels for preservation. So much of Black history has been lost or transformed as it moves across the Black Diaspora—through migration, cultural exchange, or the mass production of Black material culture. Through the act of embedding hair, I seek to create safe spaces for both collective and personal narratives.
"Double Take" Made in collaboration with Sam Fresquez from the "Hairland" practice, 2022, Kanekalon hair, steel
If you had to describe your work in just three words, what would they be?
Material, Ancestral, Transformative.
These are your words, your lessons, your flesh, lost on the tip of my tongue waiting to be called on — 2024, 1974 Mercedes Benz grill, acrylic, driver & tweeter speakers, radio interface, car battery, head rest (detail)
“The preservation and protection of black histories, identities, bodies, and cultures are essential for future generations and legacies. At its core, my creative practice offers up a critical space for the sharing and exchange of narratives, histories, and futures that are in a constant state of flux.”
— Merryn Omotayo Alaka, artist statement
We come to this space to hold, to bear, to witness — 2025, vinyl Nigerian mat, hair, beauty supply earrings, thread, steel, 8 x 8 feet
How do you envision your practice evolving as you continue to incorporate West African and American references into your work or even experiment with other mediums or sources?
I think my practice will always be ever-evolving! I’m interested in the hybrid identities embedded in the materials and processes I work with. More recently, the connections I make extend beyond just the geographical ties between West Africa and America. The identity of material culture is constantly shaped by mass production, capitalism, consumerism, cultural exchange, and migration. Likewise, Blackness as a construct remains fluid, continuously influenced by societal structures and colonial histories. I believe the materials, mediums, and processes I explore will continue to reflect these complexities as my work evolves over time.
"I carry the house of my father," 2023, vinyl Agbada, thread, hair (detail)
"I carry the house of my father," 2023, vinyl Agbada, thread, hair (detail)
Bio, artist statement + images are courtesy of the artist.