A journey through Precious Okoyomon’s poetic universe

Until May 25th, 2025, Kunsthaus Bregenz presents ONE EITHER LOVES ONESELF OR KNOWS ONESELF, a solo exhibition by Precious Okoyomon. Known for their poetic, immersive installations, Okoyomon transforms the museum into a dreamlike space where identity, colonial history, and spirituality intertwine.

The exhibition unfolds across multiple levels, each offering a distinct psychological and sensory experience. On the ground floor, consulting rooms inspired by Carl Jung invite visitors into existential dialogues about dreams and hidden emotions, surrounded by Okoyomon’s hybrid, doll-like figures.

Navigating the museum becomes increasingly disorienting—darkened stairwells and lowered ceilings heighten a sense of confinement. On the first floor, stuffed animals hang from nooses, their handcrafted forms adorned with real feathers. Suspended between innocence and distress, they reflect Okoyomon’s exploration of care, vulnerability, and loss.

A stark contrast follows on the second floor, where a giant teddy bear lies abandoned on a plush pink carpet. Its sorrowful eyes and heart-shaped paws evoke nostalgia and fragility, amplified by the ethereal sounds of Takiaya Reed, whose ambient compositions blur the line between waking and dreaming.

At the top, visitors step into a living garden where butterflies hatch and flutter within a controlled ecosystem. Just beyond the mesh, a film captures Okoyomon piloting a plane over Ohio’s suburbs, reading their poetry to the sky—a meditation on longing and transcendence, constrained by physical barriers.

Okoyomon’s poetic voice remains central. Their 2024 book, But Did You Die?, confronts structural violence with tenderness and defiance. Like their installations, it oscillates between beauty and discomfort, challenging perceptions of self and society.

ONE EITHER LOVES ONESELF OR KNOWS ONESELF merges personal and collective histories, where nature, memory, and transformation remain in constant dialogue—an exhibition that lingers, much like a half-remembered dream.