Merryn Omotayo Alaka

My applied creative practice has been intuitively rooted in an exploration of collective memory and identity with a curiosity for how the histories of the Black Diaspora are preserved and reproduced. I use pattern-making as a metaphor for the repetition of knowledge and traditions continually passed down through generations. Through themes of transformation, authenticity, and cultural identity, I conceptualize safe spaces as a necessary strategy for passing on intergenerational imagery, narratives, and traditions for a people whose histories are constantly erased, misrepresented, and misinterpreted.

Through the reinterpretation of family archives as well as references to Black popular culture archives, my work aims to subvert westernized notions around cultural and material value. I transform and reconstruct both found and passed down familial objects and textiles into contemporary cultural artifacts that serve as vessels chronicling personal or collective experiences. Working across sculpture, installation, performance, and fiber practices, my work builds a visual language through iterations of historically significant symbols and motifs found across the Diaspora and personal family textiles.

At its core, my practice is a collaboration with both past and future generations, it is the blending of the ancestral with the contemporary and the spiritual with the physical.

Merryn Omotayo Alaka (b. 1997, Indianapolis, Indiana) is a Nigerian and American artist who holds a BFA in printmaking from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Alaka’s work spans from sculptural works, textiles, to jewelry design and explores realities and identities across the Black Diaspora and the Black female body. Her works often draw references from West African textiles, Yoruba beaded sculptures and forms of adornment. She uses culturally and historically significant materials such as hair, jewelry, beads, and textiles to do so. Alaka uses this range of materials to address subjective cultural and racial perspectives.

Omotayo Alaka has exhibited at institutions including the Tucson Museum of Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and Mesa Contemporary Arts Center. Omotayo Alaka is the recipient of the 2022 Lehman Emerging Artist Grant from the Phoenix Art Museum. Merryn Omotayo Alaka currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois pursuing her MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is represented by Lisa Sette Gallery, in Phoenix Arizona.