About Zak
Bio
Zak is a creative alter ego of contemporary artist Ayobola Kekere-Ekun(b. 1993). She was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, and currently lives in South Africa. Her B.A. and M.A. in Visual Arts were received from the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos, where she majored in Graphic Design. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Art and Design at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Zak’s practice examines the intelligence of material forms, specifically how matter can register motion, hold memory, and generate structure. Working with fabric as both medium and collaborator, she creates sculptural paintings that investigate the tension between control, release, repetition and variation. Each work begins as a pliable surface, then evolves through folding, expansion and compression into a dense topography.
Zak’s depersonalisation is an attempt to reinforce an emphasis on material over maker. Sidelining personal narrative redirects attention toward how the work itself articulates the slow accumulation of gesture, repetition and time embedded in each piece.
Artist Statement
My work explores how line, material, and repetition can become ways of thinking, recording, and making meaning. Using folded lengths of fabric, I create sculptural works that sit between painting and sculpture, transforming surface into structure and giving physical form to gesture. Although folding is central to the work, I am not interested in the fold alone. I am interested in what happens when line is given dimension, weight, tension, and form.
I think of these pieces as records of an ongoing dialogue between myself and the material. Fabric is not a passive surface that I simply direct into place. It resists, responds, yields, and asserts its own character. In that sense, it becomes both collaborator and witness, holding the traces of every attempt to shape and understand it. Repetition is central to this process. For me, repetition is not just a method of making, but a form of humility, a return to the same gesture with the understanding that it can never be fully exhausted.
Colour is equally important to how I enter the work. My relationship to colour is emotional and atmospheric before it is formal. I need to feel something in response to a fabric before I can begin. I often imagine the material as an environment, a space with its own mood, pressure, and internal logic, and that response helps guide the direction of the work.
Light and colour function as active sculptural elements within each piece. As light shifts, so does the relationship between fold, shadow, depth, and movement. I think of each work as a self-contained environment, where fabric becomes a kind of terrain and colour and light act as weather and atmosphere. Through that interplay, perception becomes part of the work itself.
Selected Exhibitions
March 2026, Boundless Forms –House of Fine Art (HOFA), London
March 2026, Efuru and the Woman of the Lake – Adegbola Gallery, Lagos
May 2025, It Takes a Village: Yesterday and Tomorrow – Mitochondria Gallery, Texas
May 2025, Winners Take All (solo) – Guns and Rain, Johannesburg
March 2025, Her Gaze: A Woman’s Truth – Rele Gallery, London
March 2025, Between Us & the Stars – BKhz Gallery, Johannesburg
October 2024, Global Muses (OVR) – Vortic Art
October 2024, Unveiling Perspectives – C + N Canepaneri, Genoa
September 2024, A Closer Look – 70 Square Meters, Shanghai
July 2024, Her Alchemy– House of Fine Art (HOFA), London
May 2024, Messages from Contemporary Africa– Japan-Africa Contemporary Art Association (JACAA), Yokohama
March 2024, Decade– Guns and Rain, Johannesburg
November 2023, The Sound of Our Souls– UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles
November 2023, Another Life (solo)– C + N Canepaneri, Milan
August 2023, A Field of Dreams – BKhz Gallery, Johannesburg
August 2023, The Power of Play and Borderline Battles (solo) – ADA Contemporary Art Gallery, Accra
November 2022, Refuge: An Uncommon Home – ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg
November 2022, Poetics of Material – Rele Gallery, Los Angeles
October 2022, Perspectives – Thinkspace Projects, Los Angeles
June 2022, Unity – Volery Gallery, Dubai
January 2022, Hand Land – C + N Canepaneri, Milan
November 2021, Hidden Message – Gallery Func, Shanghai
October 2021, LAX/ORD III: Growing the Focus – Vertical Gallery, Chicago
August 2021, The Invincible Hands – Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Lagos
July 2021, Mother of Mankind– ADA Contemporary Art Gallery, Accra x House of Fine Art (HOFA), London
June 2021, She and I (solo OVR) – UNIT, London
May 2021, Get a Load of This!– Daniel Raphael Gallery, London
October 2020, High Stakes (solo) – Guns and Rain, Johannesburg
January 2020, Young Contemporaries Alumni – National Museum, Lagos
October 2019, Making Matter: Materiality and Technology in Nigerian Art – Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Lagos
July 2019, Suffrage – Guns and Rain, Johannesburg
May 2019, Imagine the Opposite – No End Contemporary, Johannesburg
April 2019, Resilient Lines (solo) – Rele Gallery, Lagos
May 2017, Idanimo – Terrakulture Gallery, Lagos
May 2017, In Honour of Professor Bolanle Awe – Museum of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Ibadan
February 2017, Her Story – Rele Gallery, Lagos
January 2016, Young Contemporaries – Rele Gallery, Lagos
Art Fairs & Festivals
January 2026, Art SG – Singapore
December 2025, Art Miami – Miami
April 2025, Expo Chicago – Chicago
March 2025, Art Central – Hong Kong
March 2025, Art Fair Tokyo – Tokyo
February 2025, LA Art Show – Los Angeles
January 2025, Art SG – Singapore
December 2024, Art Miami – Miami
November 2024, Art021 – Shanghai
October 2024, Art Toronto – Toronto
May 2024, Latitudes Art Fair – Johannesburg
May 2023, Future Fair – New York
February 2023, Arte Fiera – Bologna
April 2022, Miart – Milan
March 2022, Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (KKNK) – Oudtshoorn
December 2021, SCOPE Miami Beach – Miami
December 2020, Untitled Art Fair (OVR) – Miami
September 2019, Latitudes Art Fair – Johannesburg
July 2019, Turbine Art Fair – Johannesburg
November 2018, ArtX Lagos – Lagos
November 2016, Ake Arts and Book Festival – Abeokuta
Awards
2025 – The Future Awards 2025 Prize for Art
2021 – Absa L’Atelier Award
2018 – The Future Awards 2018 Prize for Creativity
2018 – The Dean Collection 20 St(art)ups Grant
2018 –The South African Research Chair Initiative for Visual Arts Doctoral Scholarship
2016 – Rele Art Foundation “Young Contemporaries” Grant
2014 – University of Lagos, Convocation Prize
2012 – United States Consulate General ‘Women’s History Month’ Art Contest
Contact
For enquiries and information: