[Iamthenublack] Olalekan B Jeyifous // Architect

Introduce yourself

Olalekan Jeyifous, and I am a Nigerian Born, Brooklyn-based architect/artist who is both compulsively creative and perpetually inspired by everything surrounding me. However, my work derives primarily from my background in architecture, my love of sci-fi, cultural mythology, travel, political narratives, urban planning strategies and the myriad ways in which the digital and analog interact.

Favourite song lyric

“…You’re in the same barrel all us other crabs are caught /and if I have to live, you have to live; whether you like this shit or not” 

–El P

I love this line as it appeals to the grittier introspective part of my mind and this is where my illustrations of future dystopias are typically drawn from.

I’m inspired by

Almost everything because what I like to do is cull from the vast pool of social, cultural and digital phenomena. This includes personal interactions, novels, news, art, music, reality-TV, movies and the web. The wandering imagination that I had as a child is essentially the same one I have now, so one artist or song or musician or idea rarely motivates me independently, but instead it aggregates into a comprehensive waking-dream that compels me to get busy. Stylistically, I’d say I am inspired by dark sci-fi, urban signage, maps, information graphics and post-modernist architecture.

My icons past/present

As contrived as it may sound, tragic heroes, the coolly determined and kind-hearted, the driven and inquisitive, the passionate and loyal, the talented and generous and the humorous and unpretentious are my “icons”. I’ve always admired and respected these qualities in the everyday people that I encounter as opposed to idolizing long-gone or living legends that I will probably never interact with on any truly personal level.

Thenublack philosophy

“In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.  In that land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were free. And we borrowed much because there were always those amongst us who had just returned from the world of the living. They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering they hadn’t redeemed, all that they hadn’t understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origins…”

– Ben Okri

Connect with me

Website

Tumblr

Etsy

Architecture website