Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju
Visual ArtVisual Art
Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju is a Nigerian-American artist and writer based in Berlin. Working across painting, writing, performance, and installation, she balances intimate experiences of connection, violence, and healing against broader considerations of cultural distortion and identity. She graduated with distinction from New York University, where she studied studio art and social and cultural analysis. She is also an alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine (USA). Earnestly (2022, Archive Books) is her debut collection of writing.
In Los Angeles, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju will work on a new series of paintings on leather and her forthcoming book, BloodLetter, which expands on a recent exhibition exploring ancestry, the memory of skin, and blood. The work on leather engages the material’s embedded violence and history, using its unique surface as a site for mark-making, inscription, and remembrance.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025 | The Wishing Well, Art Basel Statements, PSM, Basel, Switzerland
2024 | Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju: BloodLetter, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover
2023 | Saint V., Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Vienna, Austria
2023 | Gymnasia, A plus A Gallery, Venice, Italy
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 | Musafiri: Travellers and Guests, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
2024 | Politics of Love, Kunsthaus Hamburg
2024 | SOCIETY: OR INFINITE REHEARSALS, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin
2024 | Twilight Is a Place of Promise, Esther Schipper, Berlin
Selected Awards
2025 | Zonta Kunstpreis, Zonta Club Ludwigshafen
2021 | Studio Grant of BBK Berlin
2018 | New York University Artistic Practice Award