At the Georg Kolbe Museum, Sensburger Allee 25, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju shows work in the group exhibition "everybody" (Aug 8–Nov 29, 2026).
The show stages new work inside a museum tied to a problematic past. Ilupeju contributes seven pieces that rework leather, found objects and paint into what she calls "second skins." The sculptures take classical torso and head forms as starting points and then add seams, piercings, studs and scars.
Her process is hands-on. She soaks animal hide, shapes it over existing forms and lets it harden. Resin and coloured pencil lock the surface. Materials come from thrifted bags, industrial leftovers and studio scraps. The resulting objects keep traces of wear. They are stitched, marked and deliberately imperfect.
There is also a performance slot on Sunday, Sept. 13, as part of the show's live programme. Ilupeju's piece is called "Church of Contrology." It folds libation, a circuit of classical Pilates moves, a reading of mourning prose and a small baptism into one act, staged around a kiddie pool that she used in her leatherwork.
"You can always add moisture back into leather. It bout being more malleable, a bit more flexible, more alive," said Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju.
The work unsettles modernist ideals of an "ideal" body by overlaying them with vulnerability, humour and bodily history, and by calling attention to how bodies are shaped, repaired and displayed.
It matters for Berlin because it places contemporary conversations about body, care and material histories inside a well-known museum space, asking visitors to reckon with form and memory in the city.
