Jollof for Love Exhibition

​What does it mean to dress a body and undress a system? In a world that polices bodies, can beauty be an act of resistance?

​From July 18th to August 17th 2025, Hotel Arena presents Jollof for Love, a fashion exhibition that marks nearly two decades of artistic and cultural work by Papa Oyeyemi. Timed to coincide with Pride Month, the exhibition brings together fashion, photography and queer activism—showing how self-expression and art have always played a role in queer progression and social change.

​Rather than following a fixed timeline, Jollof for Love offers an open and layered experience. Visitors are invited to move through key moments from Oyeyemi’s career, following a queer political story told through fashion and image-making—rich in mesh, lace, leather, and slogan T-shirts charged with emotion and intent.

​Some of the works and images were previously seen at Milan Fashion Week or in museum exhibitions, were worn by artists such as Jeangu Macrooy, Ted van Lieshout, Jean-Paul Paula, and Suzanne Oxenaar, or have been featured in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Alongside these recognisable highlights are works of shows that were shut down in Nigeria due to anti-LGBTQI+ laws, or pieces that honour Nigerian queer figures whose stories remain largely unknown outside their communities.

​The exhibition is combined with a human rights fashion event Write-to-Unite on Wednesday 30 July, held in the Hotel Arena Chapel, and visual material from a recently published zine book A Body of Twerk (2025) by Edward Akintola Hubbard and Mohamed Khezri Moghadam, about Oyeyemi’s work, and the short-fashiondocu Okrika!. Together, the works form a visual tribute to queerness, imagination, and the quiet power of clothing to speak—across borders, through time, and against silence.

​This link is to register for the Opening Reception on July 18th. On other days, the exhibition is open to the public without registration. A registration link for the Write-to-Unite event will follow.