Multimedia artist Akirash is excited to work with students

By Avraham Forrest

Published February 9, 2023 at 4:37 PM EST

"Gbajugbaja - Celebrity" by multimedia artist Akirash

Olaniyi Rasheed Akindiya, also known as “Akirash,” is a multimedia artist who works with cardboard and paper, repurposed objects, video, photography, and performance to explore contemporary issues like gun violence, immigration, race, and religion. He was born in Lagos, Nigeria and has worked in a variety of places ranging from Austin, Texas, to Australia. He recently started a residency at Indiana University Bloomington’s Eskenazi School of Art Architecture + Design. The residency runs through March 3rd. I talked with him about his plans for the residency before he arrived in Bloomington.

Alex Chambers

Alex Chambers runs WFIU’s arts desk, and produces and hosts WFIU’s Inner States, a weekly podcast and radio show about arts, culture, and ideas from southern Indiana and beyond. He’s the co-creator of How to Survive the Future, a podcast about the present, produced in partnership with Indiana Humanities. He has a PhD in American Studies, with a dissertation called Climate Violence and the Poetics of Refuge, and a book of poems called Bindings: A Preparation, about domestic life and empire. In his spare time, he teaches audio storytelling at the IU Media School. When he’s not in the woods gathering sound, you might see him out for a run on the streets of Bloomington.

See stories by Alex Chambers