My Position as an Artist/Curator

As a literary scholar, I am deeply invested in exploring the innovative storytelling forms that have emerged within Nigerian creative writing and media industries. My interests encompass Nigerian novels of the here-and-now, social media literature, digital storytelling in art, music, cinema (including TV and film), museum spaces, fashion, and lifestyle. To ground these explorations in the realities of the time, I adopt transdisciplinary research methods, including Collaborative Interactive Storytelling (CIS), a theoretical approach I have adapted from game studies. This framework examines how words, images, and sounds converge to craft cohesive narratives. I argue that there is an intentional practice of CIS within the internet space that, if paid attention to, can recalibrate our understanding of Nigerian literature as a field of study and, by extension, African literary historiography.

To date, I have written about and published essays on diverse topics such as Insta poetry, the Afro-anime initiative, NFT art created by Black women, and innovations in the burgeoning museum field in Nigeria. These interests underscore my immersion in the vibrant artistic scene of Nigeria, both at home and in the diaspora. My scholarly pursuits have birthed my practice as an artist. I realized that studying those who use today’s abundant technological tools to create and share art wasn’t enough—I wanted to actively participate in celebrating these eclectic, digital, and synergized forms of art. This realization led me to curatorial practice.

I have initiated and curated four exhibitions at the University of Alabama, all of which have been done in collaboration with people from different departments including the Department of Art and Art History, Music, and Theatre and Dance. Through these projects, I discovered my passion for museum work and exhibition curation, thus leading to my pursuing a certification in museum studies, which I will get alongside my PhD in English literature. My emphasis on collaborating with other departments in the arts aligns with my scholarly argument that literature, both as practice and theory, is deeply interconnected with other art forms, and, thus, the discipline of literature could be reframed as the literary arts. On another note, I am also a creative writer. I have self-published a novel titled Half Lives and written short stories, one of which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can check out my creative writing and museum work portfolio at https://funmiomomoji.com/. Outside of the English department, I have taken numerous creative writing courses, producing full-length non-fiction pieces and a novella. Beyond writing, I am drawn to the practical exploration of other forms especially theatre and dance, as reflected in courses I’ve taken in collaborative theatre practice, ceramics, and African Diasporic Rhythm and Jazz Techniques. These creative experiences have enriched my curatorial work and inspired ideas for harmonizing various art forms into transmedia exhibitions.

This Digital Girlhood Museum, a project of mine currently ongoing, is one of those projects that bear the markings of my academic research in new storytelling forms put forward by African creatives, my curatorial practice, and my creative writing passion. Looking ahead, I envision a future where I teach practical literary arts at a university while also working as a curator in a university museum and continuing to write. I aspire to expand my museum practice beyond the U.S. to Nigeria, my birthplace.

To put it simply, my artistic practice revolves around curation, I see myself as an artist’s artist, someone who engages with various artistic forms not to master them but to understand them enough to synthesize them into a new, dynamic language that thrives in both physical and virtual spaces. The curatorial language I am developing as an artist of artists is thematic yet fluid, dynamic, dialogic, interactive, audience-centric, collaborative, and energetic. With this proposed project, I intend to push these boundaries further, celebrating girlhood in its evolving and multifaceted forms.