“As the Curator and Audience See It”
Client/Partner: NAABA Ikenga Audience Engagement Project (Curated by Nike Awoyinka)
Discipline: Participatory Documentary Photography.
“As the Curator and Audience See It” is a participatory documentary photography project designed to foster strategic transnational relationships between international partnerships and the prestigious Italian fine arts institution, NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, London). The participatory documentary component of the partnership development process captures the dynamic relational spaces of the Ikenga Mixer with NABA, facilitated by audience engagement lead Nike Awoyinka.
As a participatory documentary photography lead, maintaining a dual role as both an active facilitator and visual documentarian allows for intentional control over the technical and aesthetic quality of the outputs. This ensures that the resulting imagery meets the rigorous standards required for exhibition and publication by project leads and curators like Nike Awoyinka.
While an image's meaning is often self-evident to the maker, guiding text is essential to elicit meaningful captions and bridge perspective gaps.
Field Notes & Methodology
During the panel session facilitated by Nike Awoyinka, the unfolding narrative was driven by the variety of observable gestures among audience members and panel participants. These micro-expressions and physical cues served as the primary prompt for where the camera's lens turned.
Navigational Proximity: A written note passed to engage the panel moderator regarding the Q&A start time resulted in a physical gesture and a vacant seat a few minutes later.
Dynamic Perspective Shift: This moment enabled a relocation to a point-of-view vantage point at close range to the other panel members, positioned directly in front of the audience.
Collaborative Framing: This spontaneous location change became an unwitting collaborative prompt, directly shaping the intimate composition and immediacy of the subsequent audience engagement shots.
Curator Reflection
Reflecting on the impact of the documentation, audience engagement lead Nike Awoyinka shared:
“Ayodeji, thank you so much for coming through for me, as you always do. Honestly, from the moment you walked in and just quietly started taking photographs, doing what you do, it meant so much to me. No fuss, no asking what was needed; you just got on with it. I don’t take that kind of support for granted. I really hope you got a chance to join the discussion and were not behind the camera the whole time!”
Shared Expressions: Spontaneous reactions and engagement among attendees during dialogue moments.
Acoustics of Interaction: Capturing the spatial layout and audience proximity during the NABA panel session.
Cartographic Textiles: Detail of narrative-driven apparel mapping urban spaces and boundaries.
Acoustics of Proximity: A deep-focus shot emphasizing the spatial dynamics of the audience. The foreground element creates an acoustic "frame," drawing the viewer's eye to the subjects in the mid-ground, whose specific attire, a vibrant intersection of cultural identity and fashion, underscores London's role as a global reference point for creative practice.
Embodied Attention & Adornment: A close-range perspective capturing the physical posture of engaged listening. The subject’s interlocked hands and elaborate arm tattoos serve as a form of visual adornment, a personal reflection of the creative industries that NABA identifies as a core nexus: "a context where ideas, cultures and opportunities continuously intersect"