The art world is full of middle class people and nepotism – that wasn’t my background

The London-based artist Ayo Akingbade is exhibiting two films about belonging, gentrification, and power in A Glittering City at London’s Whitechapel Gallery

Ayo Akingbade’s latest film ‘Fire in My Belly’ hopes to reveal the dreams, anxieties, and activism of young Londoners. (Scott Gallagher)

Coming back to London’s Whitechapel Gallery for my own show is a bit surreal. I think my 19-year-old self would be gobsmacked. I’d been part of the gallery’s youth collective, Duchamp & Sons, in 2014, for Bart Lodewijks’s White Li(n)es project – where he collaborated in workshops with local young people to create site-specific chalk drawings.  Now, I’m exhibiting two of my own films: Dear Babylon (2019) and Fire in My Belly (2021), a new Whitechapel Gallery commission, in collaboration with the same gallery’s youth group. Both films look at a sense of belonging, urbanism, gentrification, power, and resilience.

We worked together for over six months to make Fire in My Belly, exploring issues of place, belonging, and displacement through workshops and field trips in East London.

There are a plethora of scenes that reveal what community means to us. We pay homage to the activist Claudia Jones at Highgate Cemetery – where she is buried ­– and I talk to Farouk Agoro, an architect who designed the colourful mural on Brixton Road Bridge, in order to look at how overlooked migrant legacies can be preserved. Through all these voices I try to reveal the dreams, anxieties, and activism of young Londoners.