Discipline
Literature and music
About the artist
Pelumi Adejumo is a Nigerian-Dutch runaway pastor's child, interdisciplinary writer, and lucid dreamer. They publish poetry, create performances and music, sometimes in collaboration with the collective Public Relations. Their work is strongly influenced by West-African spirituality and mythology, incorporating both Christian and Yoruba influences, as well as queer and feminist theory. Working with themes such as migratory grief, the grammar of the “poor” and researching the role and reclamation of spirituality in queer lives. They understand language also as a place of struggle. Using unintelligibility and the mix-match of languages to open up disruptive creative and musical possibilities. In 2020 they were selected by NRC as one of the promising artists of the Lowlands. They wrote ‘soms ik voel mij zombie’, a work exploring the limits and possibilities of multilingualism in grammar. This work garnered a nomination for the ‘Nieuwe Types' graduation prize in 2021, and in 2023 was winner of the Frans Vogel Poëzieprijs. Collaborators in the past include Sonsbeek biennale 20-24, SAVVY Contemporary, de Appel, Metro54, National Theatre Young, National Opera & Ballet, Pank Magazine, deBuren, De Gids, Into The Great Wide Open and Montez Press Radio. They worked as a thesis adviser for the Sandberg MA program BlackerBlackness. They work as an editor/programmer for Girls Like Us Magazine in Brussels, for the international literature festival Read My World in Amsterdam, and as a writer/critic for Mister Motley Magazine.
“Water Hymnal”
Written and sang by Pelumi Adejumo
Sound edit by Bobby Iliev
Rotterdam, 2024
Cover image: Ateş Spirali, water paint on paper, by Pelumi Adejumo 2023