Barakat Omomayowa

Hailing from west London, Barakat Omomayowa is a British-Nigerian creative whose interest in the arts began sitting in the theatre ‘watching how a story could move people, then realising those stories weren’t always ours’. She’s been finding ways to tell them ever since; initially through ballet, in which she is classically trained, then through acting, which she did for ten years, and now through curation. 

Omomayowa is particularly interested in art that ‘sits in the in between; textiles, image, sound, food, gathering. Anything that holds tension, memory, and care at once’. And finds herself influenced by ‘everyday people who remix, make do, and imagine better futures out of scraps’. She sees curating as ‘a way of creating space that other people can enter where I didn’t see any,’ and is particularly drawn to the alchemy of the medium in which ‘you take fragments, stories, rage, softness, joy, and bring people into conversation with them’.

‘After school my friends and I would cycle to the South Bank, get doughnut holes and dance salsa by the river. It was freedom; a place that held joy without asking us to buy anything or be anything. It still means that to me.’

One of Omomayowa’s key pieces of curatorial work to date is A Le Tunse, which grew from an initial conversation with community arts facilitator Jess Amaral to ‘a living archive connecting London and Ghana through threads of climate, memory and community’. Within this, Omomayowa’s successful bringing together of academics, activists and illustrators for an atypical intimate panel discussion offered her a valuable reminder that ‘curation isn’t just about what’s presented, it’s about how people feel in the room’.

For Omomayowa, Southbank Centre Presents offers ‘a chance to hold space at scale, to bring local thinking into central rooms, and to do it in a way that’s honest to where I come from’. Within the programme she is particularly looking forward to ‘learning through doing. Building with people who care. And shaping something that doesn’t just entertain but transforms’.