Love is an Everyday Pollination with Precious Okoyomon

Photography by Brigitte Lacombe | Words by Michelle Grey

Nigerian-American poet, conceptual artist and chef Precious Okoyomon creates expansive installations that intertwine plants, poetry and sculpture to both celebrate and caution against the chaos of nature. These installa- tions are rich, sculptural landscapes alive with growth, decay and diverse materials reflecting nature’s complex interplay with historical narratives of colonisation and enslavement.

Okoyomon’s multifaceted work, acting as a gateway to new worlds, has been showcased in solo exhibitions at notable institutions such as Luma Westbau in Zürich and Museum MMK in Frankfurt, with significant perfor- mances at Serpentine Galleries and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and at the 58th Venice Biennale.

They also held a residency at Luma Arles and published their second title, But Did U Die?, via The Serpentine Galleries/Wonder Press. While it’s true Okoyomon never wants to dominate nature, it seems their career certainly defies this notion.

Michelle Grey from A-M Journal speaks with Okoyomon about plants, po- etry and the everyday pollination of love.

A-M Journal: How’s your week been?

Okoyomon: I’m visiting my mom at home in Ohio, so it’s been kind of nice to get a break from New York. New York is flooding at the moment.

A-M Journal: Speaking of being at home, I love that you used to bury your poems in the ground when you were a child. Why did you do that?

Okoyomon: It’s honestly my mother. She told me that if I planted my poems and my dreams in the ground, they would grow. That was the most effec- tive way to have your dreams.

A-M: That’s so beautiful. Does your mother also have a strong relationship with the earth?

Okoyomon: No matter where we lived, whether it be Lagos or Cincinnati or Houston, she’s always gardened, and she’s always had the same plants. She always brings her plants to new places and transplants them. And so, it was like a very big thing for me. I always say that it made sense to me when I started making art that it would be the natural tongue I use, which is soil and plants – that’s my love language.

That’s the original language I was taught. Me and my mother spent a lot of time just planting and playing with soil growing up, and so it was just very natural. It made the most sense to me that I would spend all my time and energy on soil, my soil memory.

A-M: So, if the earth and soil is your foundation, what place does writing have in your artwork?

Okoyomon: In all my installations, the work always starts out with a poem. Everything starts out with writing, my words are the seeds, and it builds from there – whether it be the work I make, or an idea I have. I started off as a poet, and I don’t think that ever disappeared. It just faded. The work is an endless poem in some ways. So, everything starts out with writing.

A-M: Can you tell me about your work, being in communion with the en- vironment rather than dominating it? I really love that idea, and it comes through a lot in your installations.

Okoyomon: I couldn’t even imagine dominating the environment because it’s an acceptance for me of knowing that I am part of the earth in this very intense and beautiful way, and I’m humbled by it. And then it’s learning how to hold that communion, how to have that relation be continuously building and pollinating. It’s a mutual understanding of growth and love, and how I continue to learn. Domination is impossible. It’s a futile cause.

A-M: Is there an overall narrative about saving the planet or is it less preachy, and more about encouraging people to better their relationship with the earth?

Okoyomon: I mean, it’s truly about how we relate with the planet and how we think of ourselves as being separate. The idea that human beings sep- arate from the earth is a huge misconception because we are our envi- ronment around us. It takes millions of years for anything on this planet to completely disintegrate, so in essence this earth is completely composed

of us, and destroying it is only announcing our premature death.

It’s, like, we have to find how to do that work, that really hard work to under- stand where we are now, and also not add to the suffering.

A-M: Speaking of pain and suffering, can you talk about reconciling those potentially differing emotions in your work?

Okoyomon: I think I’m just on the path of revolutionary love, and to build community around that, to build these bridges. The pain is always there, the suffering is there – it’s what our whole society is built upon. It’s, like, how do I reinforce this kind of unending joy, this resilience?

Because resilience is love, you know, it’s energy. That is literally the most powerful energy force we have. Sure, the pain is always there because that’s just the everyday condition of human suffering. And for me, it’s like having the grace to hold all of that and understand the gravity of it and slowly doing that work – the cosmic love-work, which I call ‘little mending bonds’. Love is an everyday pollination, is what I say.

A-M: You speak about the concept of ‘fragilization’ often. Can you explain what you mean by holding space for fragilization?

Okoyomon: I am lucky to be a student of [Israeli artist, writer and psychoan- alyst] Bracha Ettinger, who I say is my matrixial mother. She wrote a book called Matrixial Borderspace – it’s a very important book to me, and I rec- ommend it to everybody, and I recommend her work to everybody. She’s an amazing psychoanalyst, a wonderful artist and lovely friend, and I’m always trying to tell people about her work.

She has this theory called ‘fragilization’, which is where we understand ourselves as not just individuals, but understanding ourselves as other, and that’s the co-consciousness that we live in. We have to hold fragiliza- tion to understand that we are truly really interconnected, and it’s kind of impossible to imagine that we’re not interconnected with each other and the Earth itself.

So, that’s kind of the first step of fragilization, to understand yourself as this bigger ecosystem that isn’t separate from anyone else, and then you can divide into the co-conscious of our narcissistic disorders and then really try to break down everything. She’s one of my favourite thinkers, and I sit with her work a lot.

A-M: How does your queer identity inform your work and practice, or is that more of a personal journey?

Okoyomon: I mean, it is who I am and it’s not separate from the work, and it’s also just my radical love position. How lucky and blessed am I in this world to understand myself in proximity to other people, and also to have the grace of love and transformation.

This type of radical queer love for me is also part of my ethos of under- standing the world. It teaches me a lot, like how I love the people I love, and the communities I build within that love. It’s my long, everlasting journey of truly cracking more and more into myself.

And then within all those cracks is all this love seeping in, and all the people I meet that become my chosen family, all my friends I’ve made along the way. It’s just this big energy that we just keep building. And it swirls into many facets of my practice, like my queer cooking collective with two of my best friends. I can’t separate any of it.

This summer, we did a residency at [Thai artist] Rirkrit Tiravanija’s restau- rant, Unclebrother, and that was amazing because we were making really weird, fun food in a community upstate that has never eaten anything like that. Part of that radical love for me is feeding people, caring for people, witnessing, making these spaces that people can fragilize, and creating these small moments of magic. It’s endless.

A-M: That’s really beautiful... It sounds like love is your creative elixir. Can you talk to me about your moments of creation, or if you have a specific creative process?

Okoyomon: I think it’s more fluid for me, especially since my life is always on the go. I travel a lot for work, but when I’m home I spend a lot of time in my studio upstate. The moments where I have ideas, and when I’m writing and sitting with my practice is in the woods. I think because I grew up kind of in a more country setting, I’m very used to it. My spirit and soul feel most calm when I’m in the woods or being able to touch the soil.

Having the space to breathe and really sit with my mind and be calm is very hard to do in the city. So, I feel like my writing practice really stems from a lot of self-knowledge of being able to have these spaces to just be still.

I think that the gift for me is being able to sit with my own self and hear my silence and that’s what a lot of the work comes from – being able to hear the silence of myself. It’s really simple: I find a place that’s quiet and I can write, I reduce the intellectual and emotional noise in my life, and I arrive at the silence of myself. And that’s where the work is made.

A-M: When it comes to your installations, are there any specific plants or fau- na or elements in nature that you’re particularly drawn to?

Okoyomon: I love invasive plants. I love plants that have been ‘criminalised’. I love these monstrosities that people don’t know how to handle. That’s what I’m drawn to.

A-M: What’s a criminalised plant?

Okoyomon: In the US, the plant I work with the most is kudzu. It’s a vine native to Asia that was first introduced by the US government to farms in Mississippi in 1876, as a means to fortify erosion of local soil, which had been degraded by the over-cultivation of cotton, and then turned to be uncontrollably invasive.

The US brought over kudzu thinking it would be this magical plant to help the soil in the south regenerate, and it would revive our topsoil and build healthy soil. But it didn’t happen because our soil beds were so cracked, what the kudzu did was just dig deeper roots. It actually thrived in bad soil conditions.

So, the roots are specifically what holds these really crazy, ancient soil beds together. But then the problem is that it’s an extremely invasive plan that thrives in these situations. What has happened is that kudzu has kind of swal- lowed the South. It would take over whole plantations. It would destroy crops, and the people didn’t know what to do with it. They didn’t know how to handle it. It was literally a nightmare for farmers, but I think it’s such a beautiful plant because it shows the resilience of black life in the US.

It literally is the metaphor. And if you were to take it away from the South, the soil beds would crumble. But in Japan, where the plant is from, it’s not considered invasive because it’s native to their country, and they know how to handle and work with it. It’s really cool to see how it is in different places.

Kudzu is extremely illegal to grow in the US now because there’s not a way of understanding how to contain it. So [certain states] have criminalised it, which I think is really funny. I’ve tried to grow it in several places, like in Aspen, and I got a cease and desist letter.

A-M: Before we go, can you tell me what’s next for you?

Okoyomon: I just did the Thai Biennial in December [2023] – Rirkrit Tiravanija curated it. I’m also doing a Byler group show next year that I’m curating with Philippe Parreno in Switzerland. And then I’m doing the Nigerian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. I’ve got a busy year ahead!