Ima-Abasi Okon is a visual artist based in London. She graduated from the London College of Communication with a BA in Graphic Media Design Illustration in 2005, followed by an MA in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins College in 2008.
Okon is interested in language and sound and how meanings are produced; her work in print, sculpture and film explores variables, and often culminates in complex, layered arrangements which expose cultural structures and identity representation. Okon has achieved a number of awards and residencies and her film screenings and group exhibitions have taken place globally.
Exhibitions include, There’s Something In The Title that’s More Interesting than the Finality of (A Title), The Showroom, London (2018); PRAISE N PAY IT/PULL UP, COME INTO THE RISE, South London Gallery (2018); No Place to Spit, Set Space, London (2017); UNTITLED: Art on the Conditions of Our Time, New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2017); In This Soup We Swim, Kingsgate Project Space, London (2016); Changing City: Shifting Places, CCA Lagos, Nigeria (2016); Arena, Center of Contemporary Art, Poland (2014) and a number of screenings including at Akademie der Künst, Germany (2016); Mount Florida Studios, Glasgow (2016); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2015); Atomic Pictures, Paris (2015).
Her 2014 solo exhibition, The Fountains Are Decorative and Are Not Water Play Areas, was part of the Supercollider Contemporary Arts Project in Blackpool, UK. In 2017 Okon worked with Iniva on a series of dialogues between herself and curator, Hansi Momodu-Gordon over a period of four months. The ‘Precarious Decades’ series explored curatorial and artistic practice framed by the experience of the diaspora in its examination of strategies of hope and subversion born out of collaboration and allegiance.
In 2018, Okon collaborated with Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom on Canine Wisdom for the Barking Dog – the Dog Done Gone Deaf, a piece for the 2018 Dak’Art Dakar Biennial.