Karimah Ashadu receives double exposure in Chicago

Award-winning artist Karimah Ashadu is preparing for two major exhibitions in Chicago in 2026. Ashadu's video work Machine Boys will go on view at The Art Institute of Chicago, while her solo exhibition Tendered will be shown at The Renaissance Society.

In Ashadu's video Machine Boys (2024), she explores the hardships that young men from Nigeria's agrarian north have to suffer on the streets of Lagos as they drive motorcycle taxis to earn their living. Banned in 2022 by the government due to rising crime rates and traffic violations, the okada drivers push forward despite these hindrances, navigating through the narrow streets of Lagos and the labyrinthine recesses of government regulation, police surveillance and local harassment. Ashadu received the Silver Lion for Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale in 2024 for Machine Boys.

Simultaneously, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago is presenting Tendered, a solo exhibition by Ashadu. This also marks the US debut of Ashadu's latest moving image installation MUSCLE (2025), in which the artist contemplates the hallmarks of masculinity through the bodybuilding culture that flourishes in Lagos’ informal spaces. In Ashadu's handling of the camera, the body is exposed as the focal point where the notions of labor, investment and self-fashioning coalesce, a tangible manifestation of the desires that young Nigerian men harbor. The exhibition Tendered was co-commissioned by Fondazione In Between Art Film, Camden Art Centre and The Renaissance Society. Tendered was on view last year at Camden Art Centre in London as Ashadu's first institutional solo show in the UK.

Born in the United Kingdom to Nigerian parents, Karimah Ashadu introduces a unique, diasporic perspective into her video and sculptural works, which serve as a vehicle for disentangling the complex legacy of European colonialism left over after African countries achieved their independence. Through this artistic intervention, Ashadu strives to assist in the decolonization of Africa's history and mindset.

The exhibitions at The Art Institute Chicago and The Renaissance Society open on September 11 and 12, 2026 respectively. The exhibition at The Renaissance Society is organized within the framework of Unison, a biennial initiative established by Fondazione In Between Art Film to commission and produce moving image-based exhibitions in collaboration with international institutions.