Ima-Abasi Okon

Incorporeal hereditaments like Love [can] Set(s) You Free, according to Kelly, Case, Dru Hill, Kandice, LovHer, Montel and Playa with 50 - 60g of  –D,)e,l,a,y,e,d1;—O,)n,s,e,t2;— ;[heart];M,)u,s,c,l,e3;[heart];—s,)o,r,e,n,e,s,s4 is a solo exhibition by Ima-Abasi Okon at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven from 10 May–21 September 2025. The title of the show indicates how the artist’s attention to language allows her to take hold of all that she is metabolizing while making these works. In a dedication to property and health, Okon’s new site-specific installations, recent sound sculptures, and early prints unfold across one immersive environment.

The artist’s road running began as a leisure activity during Covid–19 and has since become a way for her to decipher industrial complexes and has appeared in her teaching. Simultaneously Okon has started brewing, fermenting, and dehydrating plants and foods to draw out their antioxidant, anti-microbial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-atherosclerotic, and anti-diabetic properties, sharing outcomes with friends and to aurally regenerate visitors at her exhibitions. This exhibition brings Okon’s road running and naturopathic practice together in a critical examination of the body as property that pushes against self-improvement as health—a model underscored by extractive practices which relate to settler colonial ideas of land improvement that dictate what capitalism considers its optimal body.

Responding to the Van Abbemuseum building as property, Okon’s exhibition addresses its symmetry. Each gallery installation resembles its opposite, but with slight differences. The intention is to create a sense of rehearsal, and insistence, as one moves through the galleries. Galleries 1 and 10 echo each other, 2 and 9 mirror one another, and so on. It is not only the symmetry of modernism with which Okon engages, but its concepts of efficient progress for the individual, social, and political body.

Ima-Abasi Okon’s extensive exhibition shows how the collective body can break free from oppressive systems that exploit and oppress in the name of optimizing bodies and land. It challenges our acceptance of these capitalist systems as normal and gives us ideas for how we can chart our own path, slow down, nourish, replenish, and strengthen ourselves as a “body-flesh” to withstand the underlying systems of competition and property and land systems that demand an optimized version of ourselves.

Curated by Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide
Assistant curator and production: Chala Itai Westerman
Exhibition design: Ima-Abasi Okon
Artist Technical Support: Artist Project Group, Gandert De Boo, Seamus Cater, Jack James, Moxie Radway
Ambassadors: Hannah Bauer, Robbin Castillo, Salman Dirir, Derica Shields
Production and presentation: Antoine DerksenHead Installation & Technical Coordination: Diederik Koppelmans
Project engineer: Benno Hartjes
Installation team: Gijs Blankers, Perry van Duijnhoven, Stef van den Dungen, Tom Frencken, Bart van Geldrop, Tyson Goudsmits, Mark van der Gronden, Benno Hartjes, Sjoerd van Lankveld, Bram Mijnders, Leon Vos, Jeroen Vrijsen, with support from the collection team Hadewych Bartelds, Michaela Groeneveld, Marit Jacobs, Aurora Loerakker, Michel van Weegberg
Registrar: Angeliki Petropoulos
Fundraising: Joy Ravenswaaij
Communication & Marketing: Maud Bongers, Kelly Hamers, Nadine van der Deijland Boyan Houtman (ZIGT), Otis Overdijk (Otis Dirk), Renée Schmeetz (Department of Doing), Aniek Wijbenga (Moonshot Agency)
Mediation & Education Glenda Pattipeilohy, Yda Sinaij, Vivian Vasilda, Ilse van de Wetering

4 Cally Spooner, Screen Test for the Psoas Muscle, 2023, existing internal walls, white emulsion paint, water, applied with horizontal, vertical, and circular movement.