Yussef Agbo-Ola

Yussef Agbo-Ola, born 1990, Newport News, Virginia, United States, is an artist and medicinal architect living between London, Lagos, and the Amazon Forest. Born in rural Virginia in a multi-heritage Nigerian, African-American, and Cherokee household, his work reflects hybrid identities and relationships to different landscapes, ecologies, and cultural rituals. Agbo-Ola’s multidisciplinary artistic practice is concerned with interpreting natural energy systems, through interactive experiments that explore the connections between an array of sensory environments, from the biological and anthropological, to the perceptual and microscopic. His practice questions how art, architecture, and anthropological research can create experimental environments that challenge the way we experience geological conditions and living ecosystems. His works manifests as architectural temples, photographic journalism, material alchemy, interactive performance, experimental sound design, and conceptual writing. 
Yussef holds a Masters in Fine Art from the University of the Arts London, and a Masters in Architecture from the Royal College of Art. He has led art and architectural commissions for the United Nations, Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Serpentine Gallery London, Van Abbe Museum, TEDx East End, BBC Arts, Museum Folkwang, Venice Architectural Biennials, Palais de Tokyo, Tai Kwun Arts Center, Sharjah Architecture Trennial, and Lexus Automotive Innovation Centre Japan, among others. Agbo-Ola is the founder of Olaniyi Studio and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia GSAPP where he directs an experimental design studio called the The Art of Poetic Environmental Architecture.