Ilé-Ifè is revered as the spiritual and cosmological centre of the Yoruba universe—the place where the gods first created solid land on earth. Yoruba myths narrate how deities descended from the heavens with various items, which were used to create the first land. Ifè represents the expansiveness of matter from seeming emptiness, and Ilé the first home of earthen and spiritual beings alike. In the expanded space of dreams, after death, souls leave the land to return to Ifè.

Brought on by the portals created through the sonic installation La Nuit, Écailles Translucides (At Night, Translucent Scales), Ile is the premiere of an embodied performance by artist Ife Day that materializes a playful and troubled journey through the discontinuities of the passages toward tangible and intangible presences. The title of the work refers to the Haitian creole adaptation of the Yoruba cosmology, whereby the polymorphous orishas transform and become a lwa (Haitian vodou spirit). Through this embodiment, Ilé-Ifè becomes an exercise in superposition; it is both expansion and home; potential is both reached and not reached. The body becomes a site that seeks to give form to the revolutionary potential of incessant dreams.

Ile is a journey within a journey.

Creation and interpretation by Ife Day, sound composition by Sandar Tun Tun