Episode 2: Alayo Akinkugbe
Images courtesy of Alayo Akinkugbe via instagram.com
21-year-old aspiring art curator Alayo Akinkugbe joins us this week at Young at Art. She discusses the Instagram account she created, @ablackhistoryofart, which showcases the talents of many undiscovered and overlooked black artists, sitters, curators, and thinkers from art history to today.
Since starting the account in February 2020, Alayo has graduated from The University of Cambridge with a degree in Art History, and she has spoken at The National Gallery about blackness in western art and why black sitters and artists have been ignored by the art world.
In this episode, she shares with us her motives for setting up her account, and how she has created a space that celebrates some of the people that art forgot, pulling on her own experiences as a black woman in a white art world.
Alayo delves into the tricky relationship she has with her favourite painting and tells us about some of the artists she loves and who keep her inspired and motivated in her work as a young curator. She also discusses her experiences studying at Cambridge - the good and the bad - and what advice she would give herself if she was to do it again.
Alayo mentioned two exhibitions in the episode, the Venice Biennale 2022 and Hayward Gallery’s In Bhe Black Fantastic. More information about Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s Portriat of Madeleine at The Louvre can be found here.
Harry Stevens is the host of Young at Art and is a 21-year-old art and interiors obsessive passionate about opening up the art world to all. At Young at Art Harry speaks to the tastemakers who are defining a new image of art and design today, with new episodes out weekly.
If you enjoyed this episode and want to find who we will be speaking to next, you can follow the podcast on Instagram @youngatartpodcast. Today’s guest Alayo Akinkugbe can be found on Instagram at @ablackhistoryofart, and our host Harry can be found at @planetstevens. For more information about the podcast, please visit the website, www.youngatartpodcast.com
The podcast’s cover art was drawn by the Beatrice Ross, @beatricealiceross and the intro music was written and performed by Maggie Talibart, @maggie_talibart.