DUO SHOW WITH YUSSEF AGBO–OLA
BEYOND SIGHT
KUNSTRAUM HEILIG GEIST AM UNESCO-WELTERBE ZOLLVEREIN, ESSEN, GERMANY
5 OCTOBER – 2 NOVEMBER 2025
The exhibition BEYOND SIGHT—curated by Gesa Zipp und Isabella Greenberg—brings together works by Yussef Agbo-Ola and Anna Bogouchevskaia in a dialogue that explores the hidden interconnections between technological developments, cultural memory, and fundamental natural forces—structures that unfold beyond the immediately visible but have a significant impact on our present. 
At the intersection of architecture, imagination, and anthropological research, Yussef Agbo-Ola's artistic practice opens up new perspectives that understand nature not as a resource but as an intelligent and spiritual system of interrelationships, calling for new forms of perception and care. His series "Medical Skin Species" is dedicated to the material-based exploration of ecological and cultural memories and reveals invisible connections in natural cycles. The fabrics stretched across frames, whose form is reminiscent of animal skins, are hand-knitted and draw on symbolic textile traditions of the Yoruba and Cherokee cultures.
The motifs depict life forms that are only visible under microscopic magnification, as well as endangered and already extinct animal species. Using natural materials such as plant ash, clay, and algae, as well as plastic fibers collected from the oceans, they refer to bodies of water as living archives, carriers of collective memory, spiritual practices, and ecological cycles. The sculptures in the "Bone Totem Series", crafted from Amazonian angelique wood, draw on the idea that flowers, stones, or trees are understood as animate beings, and the natural world is not seen as separate from humans, but as part of a complex network of relationships. Through his work, Agbo-Ola encourages us to think about new forms of connection between human and non-human life forms. The combination of micro and macro perspectives creates an experimental approach to concepts of hybridity, such as Donna Haraway's idea of the “tentacular,” which understands ecological, social, and epistemological connections as non-linear, rhizomatic networks.
– Text by Gesa Zipp