Research
Ritual performance · Film · Visual culture
The remediation of African ancestral masquerades across ritual performance, film and other media.
Dissertation research
My research examines what happens when African ancestral masquerades move from ritual grounds to film and other screen media. I argue that contemporary Nollywood and Hollywood film invites women, street dwellers, and diasporic communities to embody ancestral masks and participate in ancestral discourse in ways that ritual and other media do not.
Fieldwork Gallery
The Itinerant Lives of Ancestral Masquerades in Yoruba Societies
Ancestral screen at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos.
Opeyemi with Dr Kola Olaiya.
Eyo masquerade effigy at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos.
Igunnuko masquerade shrine at Epetedo, Lagos.
National Museum of Unity, Ibadan.
Opeyemi with Nollywood filmmaker Bond Emeruwa.
Opeyemi with Nollywood filmmaker Femi Adebayo.
Opeyemi with Nollywood filmmaker Teco Benson.
Opeyemi with veteran Nigerian filmmaker Tunde Kelani.
Opeyemi with Nike at Nike Art Gallery.
Opeyemi with Chief Musibau Durosi.
Gelede masquerade display at the John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, Lagos.
Gelede masquerade image at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos.
Eyo painting at Nike Art Gallery, summer 2025.
Eyo, Igunnuko, and Egungun masquerade images at the National Museum, Lagos.
Photo by Opeyemi Salami