Walker Art Center to Present First Solo Museum Exhibition For Celebrated Artist, Architect, and Designer Olalekan Jeyifous
Hydricosmic Litanies Explores the Power of Waterways to Shape Our Daily Lives Through New Works, Including Sculpture, Experimental Video, and Soundscapes
August 6, 2026 — January 3, 2027
This summer, the Walker Art Center will open artist, architect, and designer Olalekan Jeyifous’s (US, b. Nigeria, 1977) first museum solo exhibition. Jeyifous, who won the prestigious Silver Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, is recognized for reimagining social spaces with consideration toward the dynamic relationships between architecture, community, and the environment. Through his wide-ranging, multidisciplinary work, Jeyifous explores how engagement with and construction of natural and human-made spaces can address critical issues of social equity and ecological justice.
For his exhibition at the Walker, titled Olalekan Jeyifous: Hydricosmic Litanies, he takes inspiration from the Mississippi River and themes from Ben Okri’s novel The Famished Road to explore waterways as complex living archives of ecological transformation, displacement, human labor, spiritual significance, and memory. Hydricosmic Litanies will feature new work created especially for this presentation, including freestanding and wall-mounted sculptural forms, experimental video, and soundscapes, among other works. Together, the range of objects draw visitors into an imagined riverine enclave that reflects on the happenings and impacts of the past as well as the possibilities of the future.
Hydricosmic Litanies will be on view from August 6, 2026, through January 3, 2027. It is curated by Taylor Jasper, the Walker’s Susan and Rob White Associate Curator, Visual Arts, whose recent and upcoming projects also include Kandis Williams: A Surface (2025) and Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love, opening on May 14, 2026. The exhibition reflects the Walker’s long history of offering first solo presentations to artists at different stages of their careers and is the result of a multi-year dialogue between Jasper and Jeyifous.
More About Olalekan Jeyifous: Hydricosmic Litanies
In the opening lines of The Famished Road, the author writes, “In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.” The novel unfolds across time and space, bringing together human and spiritual realms to explore Yorùbá beliefs, the effects of poverty on marginalized communities, and the destruction of the natural world. Similarly, Hydricosmic Litanies incorporates a depth of references and expressions, from African diasporic cosmologies and deities such as Yemọja and Mami-Wata to indigenous water spirits like Uŋkčéǧila and Wiwíla—figures tied to fertility, sustenance, floods, and the guardianship of springs. The work also explores the ramifications of colonization, industrialization, and rapid technological advancement on our connections to the environment and to creating just societies and futures.
Through these potent threads, Hydricosmic Litanies evokes the river as a powerful force that shapes daily life—through both nature’s inherent strength and the profound impacts of the human-made systems built around it. Visitors to the exhibition enter an imagined riverine enclave with platforms positioned as islands rising from sediment and industrial debris. Soundscapes, wall treatments, and experimental video create the sensations of a place and people both ancient and present. Overall, the exhibition’s sculptural and relief works represent the artist’s “Fluvial Taxonomies” or the remnants and representations of human and spiritual experiences—lives lived and events that continue to shape the future. As Jeyifous explains in his artist statement:
“Rivers have long served as lifelines for ecological and cultural balance, but colonization and industrialization disrupted these reciprocal relationships, imposing systems of control and exploitation with lasting effects. This tension informs the exhibition’s materials and forms.
Grounded in archival research and local and diasporic histories, the [exhibition] transcends specificity, embodying the river’s dual capacity to connect and divide, to nourish and erode—inviting viewers to reflect on their own relationships with aquatic chronoscapes and fluid legacies.”
“What has stayed with me about Olalekan’s practice is its extraordinary breadth. He moves across art, architecture, and design without ever losing sight of the political and human stakes of the worlds he imagines,” said Jasper. “By bringing his expansive visual language into direct conversation with the Mississippi River in Hydricosmic Litanies, Olalekan treats the river not simply as landscape or backdrop, but as a force shaped by history, spirituality, industry, and survival. At a time when questions of climate, infrastructure, and belonging are impossible to ignore, the exhibition offers a powerful and imaginative way to reckon with the worlds we have inherited and those we are still capable of building.”
About Olalekan Jeyifous
Olalekan Jeyifous (b. 1977) has exhibited at major institutions, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Vitra Design Museum, and Guggenheim Bilbao, and his work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and SFMOMA.
In addition to an extensive exhibition history, Jeyifous has spent over a decade creating large-scale public installations and was co-commissioned to design a monument to Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm for New York City’s She Built NYC initiative.
His distinctions include the 2024 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Silver Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design, the 2021 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, and two NYFA Fellowships. He has also been awarded residencies at MacDowell, The Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and he currently serves as the 2026 Brooklyn Botanic Garden Heidi Nitze Fellow. He earned a BArch from Cornell University. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
About the Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a renowned multidisciplinary arts institution that presents, collects, and supports the creation of groundbreaking work across the visual and performing arts, moving image, and design. Guided by the belief that art has the power to bring joy and solace and the ability to unite people through dialogue and shared experiences, the Walker engages communities through a dynamic array of exhibitions, performances, events, and initiatives. Its multiacre campus includes 65,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space, the state-of-the-art McGuire Theater and Walker Cinema, and ample green space that connects with the adjoining Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Garden, a partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, is one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States and home to the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Recognized for its ambitious program and growing collection of more than 16,000 works, the Walker embraces emerging art forms and amplifies the work of artists from the Twin Cities and from across the country and the globe. Its broad spectrum of offerings makes it a lively and welcoming hub for artistic expression, creative innovation, and community connection.