“Growing up on the internet connected me to Black people around the world,” she explains. “I think we all share this kind of loss of history and displacement… I feel belonging in an Atlantic idea of Blackness.” This expansive understanding illustrates a concept largely defined by Paul Gilroy in the 1990s, a “doing away” with borders, and replacing them instead with an all-encompassing sense of hybridity, and a language of shared experience and interconnectedness. This disruption of chronology and geography feels mirrored in Sodipo’s own practice, one she self describes as “dispensing” with beginnings and ends. “It’s about trying to communicate the way that time is folded, or how the past breaks into the present”, she says.

In partnership with Aspex Portsmouth and BUILDHOLLYWOOD, Sodipo’s work will be showcased on billboards across three major UK Pride events: Birmingham Pride, Brighton Pride, and Brighton Trans Pride. “Curiosity is what I hope to provoke the most,” she says. “People expect queerness and Blackness to look a certain way; I want to disrupt that.”

Can you tell us about your upbringing in London and Nigeria, and how your early experiences have influenced your perspective and creative voice today, particularly in relation to identity and belonging?

I was born in London, and I moved to Nigeria when I was six months old, and then we came back when I was 11. Sometimes I wonder what things would have been like if I grew up over there, and where I would be. That “belonging” is quite tense, so it can be quite painful to think about. I don’t really explore Yorùbá-ness in my work, or Nigerian-ness, but I think it comes in because that’s how I’ve grown up with it – it’s the culture of my parents and the culture of the church we went to, and so in performances, or even aesthetic practices, it can come through.

Do you feel “British” in that sense?

I have a British passport but I don’t consider myself British, I consider myself more of a Londoner. London is quite different from everywhere else. There are particular sensibilities that I’ve grown up with and assumptions that I make because I grew up in the UK, and England specifically, but I kind of tried to push back against that. I’m lucky enough to be able to choose whether or not I define myself in relationship to this nation, to this imperial state, and I choose not to. I understand that it’s shaped me, definitely, but it’s not something that I feel is necessary for me to claim to make a connection to. Growing up on the internet made me become connected to Black people around the world – I think we all share this kind of loss of history and displacement, even if it’s on the African continent or in the diaspora through slavery. I feel belonging in an Atlantic idea of Blackness.

Your work often navigates complex territories of Blackness, transness, and diasporic identity. When did you first start using art as a way to process or express these ideas?

When I was in second year of uni, around 2014 or 2015, Mike Brown had just been murdered, and I think that started a lot of introspection on the part of Black people, and I started to think about my Black identity and ask questions about history and why we name ourselves the way that we do. I made this piece of work about evaluation of skin colour and all these tiles that ranged from really deep dark brown to a really pale cream, and then kind of set them out like a Dulux paint chart, like they were to be sold or used as samples. I guess I didn’t quite know what I wanted to make work about, and I feel like most people don’t at that age. I was making work about space and playing with how art creates a particular set of rules that govern how people navigate through space which is quite interesting. That was the first moment.

Much of your practice feels deeply layered focusing on archival fragments, imagined futures, poetry, and performance that all come together in your work. How would you describe your creative process from concept to final form?

I think when I first started, I let the idea guide what came out, but then more recently, I know the kind of medium I want to use, I know if I want it to be a sculpture or an installation, or this or that. It also helps that there are more constraints because I make work towards shows and commissions, so there are more set boundaries about where the work can go. It’s often in flashes and then there’s a really intense period of production that I go through after everything’s kind of coalesced or floating around, and then I get everything together.

You’ve previously described your work as “for those who will come after” – can you expand on what legacy means to you as an artist, especially in the context of being part of the communities you’re part of and the communities you advocate for?

For me, it means that I hope that the work that I do will be archived in some way, and that it will be seen by future generations, particularly Black trans women. The main thing is for trans women who in the future or even now, can see themselves or aspects of their experiences reflected in this work.

When I think about future people and younger people I think it’s about doing a part of a journey for them, just extending that path a little bit more so people have more time to get on with their life and do what they need to, and hopefully build something better than what we have. That’s what that statement means for me, that people in the future will have another rung on the scaffolding already built for them.

Your installation and text-based works often disrupt linear time and history. How do you think about temporality in your work, particularly in how it relates to trans and diasporic narratives?

There are ideas of cycles and repetition in my work. In a lot of the films particular images will come up again and again, like flashes or fragments, but it’s always kind of referencing this round-like movement that happens. I try to dispense with the beginning and the end and create something that can be watched in a circle. I always want to play with time. Even with the works that I’ve made, particularly performance in text, I repeat them and develop them, and then I perform new ones, maybe I go back to the old ones, and so things progress, but then go back to where they were, and then come whenever they’re performed or seen. It’s never the same thing, it’s always shifting. It’s about trying to communicate the way that time is folded, or how the past breaks into the present, and how we interpret the past and how it shifts because of where our present is.

Tell us a bit about the work you’re creating for the Pride billboards. What ideas or emotions are you hoping to evoke in the people who encounter it in public spaces?

I guess curiosity is the thing that I want to invoke the most. I think people have an expectation of what queerness should be and should look like, what Blackness should look like as well, and I try not to do that, so I guess curiosity, questioning, and some kind of disruption.

How do you personally relate to the concept of Pride, both in terms of celebration and protest? What does Pride mean to you politically, emotionally and artistically? Has your relationship with it changed over time?

I think it definitely has changed. Growing up in a religious Pentecostal household that was also quite strict, Pride was one of the things I wanted to go to, but it was never a space that I could go into. But as I came to political awareness, Pride appeared to be less about resistance and protests, and became more about comfort and acceptance of the status quo. I think that made me quite aware that it needs to be an active struggle, that it’s never being “okay” with what we have now, but always striving to be as empowered as possible, and to make sure that everyone else is empowered, not just an individual singular group.

I think that the way that history is applied right now targets historically marginalised people and leaves us with a sense of historical defeat, which can be disempowering, and it can stop you from moving. My response to it is to produce work that ensures that Black trans people in particular can look at history and feel ok, or good, or even joyful about it in some way.

You often draw from archives and speculative storytelling to construct alternative Black and trans futures. What archives, personal or public, are important to your work right now?

I was a Tumblr girly (laughs), so a lot of the collage work I do I build from Tumblr. I access a lot of archival material through the internet – I had a show in Southampton and spent time in the archives and the physical archives looking at letters and stuff, but a lot of the time I was also able to look through the archive on the computer, so I’m really glad that archives are accessible in that way. I’m thinking about how we access history nowadays, and I tried to show that in the work, like all the things that I make are with the use of my computer. I hold like 10,000 years on my computer, you know?

You’re a multidisciplinary artist, moving between text, performance, installation, and image. What medium do you find yourself most at home in these days, or does it always shift depending on the story you’re telling?

I think it does shift depending on the stories I’m telling. I know how to put together a collage so easily now – it comes quickly to me, so that’s become the most comfortable place to be. But I’m trying to get back into writing text, and I’m doing a lot of performance as well. I think my collages are more interested in getting a contemporary snapshot of things, or telling a contemporary story.

Looking ahead, what ambitions or dreams are guiding your next chapter, both artistically and personally? Are there any upcoming projects or ideas you’re especially excited about exploring?

I probably want to leave this country. I want to go somewhere that is safer. The thing that people need to understand is that people are leaving because it’s unsafe. My goal is to find a place to live where I don’t have to worry so much and I can move easier. And also that it is sunny and not so depressing all the time. That requires me to have a kind of stability in my career, so that’s something that I’m trying to focus on. I’ve got a foundation, but everything’s been so shaky recently in the art world for political reasons and capital reasons, but I’m trying to build more of a stable foundation and be more established so that then I can decide to move somewhere else and still be able to make art.

I’ve also got a performance that I will be doing in Sao Miguel in the Azores, a bunch of islands in the Atlantic that are part of the Portuguese state, and that is going to be at the end of September as part of the Biennale there.

And is there anything else you want to mention?

Right now, transphobia is being used as the wedge point to open the door to authoritarian measures in lots of different ways. So if you hear transphobia, challenge it, even when it’s your friends, and donate to legal funds for trans people. I will be launching a GoFundMe soon, so keep an eye out for that, too.