Ata Ire

Ata Ire

I grew up surrounded by women. My mother, my grandmother and my aunties were the people who cared for me, fed me, protected me and taught me many of the things I know today. A lot of what they did felt ordinary when I was young. It was only as I grew older that I began to understand how much of my identity was being shaped through those everyday acts of care. One of the things I remember most is ata (spice). In my home, pepper was never simply something added to food for taste. It carried a kind of strength. Whenever I fell ill as a child, my mother would often make pepper soup for me. She would make it hot and tell me to take it, saying it would strengthen my spirit. Sometimes this happened before calling the doctor or taking me to the hospital. At the time, I accepted it as what mothers did. Looking back now, I see something much deeper. I see her belief, her instinct to protect me, and the way care was expressed through something as simple as food. That memory became the beginning of Ata Ire. The title comes from the idea of the fire that brings good fortune. I began thinking about the women in my family and in my community, and the many ways women create, carry and bring good fortune into their homes. They cook, nurture, protect, teach and pass knowledge from one generation to another. Their contributions can be so deeply woven into everyday life that they are easily overlooked.I wanted to make those invisible forms of strength visible. When I began thinking about how to photograph this story, I kept returning to the image of a plant. I imagined the women as roots, the foundation from which everything grows. Their African hairstyles became branches, carrying history, identity and traditions through generations. The ata became the fruit: the fire, strength and good fortune that they bear and pass on. This became the visual language of Ata Ire. I chose to work primarily with Black women because they represent the women I grew up seeing and the women through whom much of this cultural knowledge reached me. Their dark skin became an important part of the work, not something to alter or disguise, but a canvas on which identity, beauty, strength and memory could exist unapologetically. The hairstyles are equally important. Hair carries memory. I grew up seeing women spend time making one another’s hair, sharing conversations and passing knowledge through these intimate moments. Hairstyles can change with time, but the act of creating them, teaching them and carrying them forward connects generations. By transforming hair into branches and placing ata within it, I bring together two things that have always existed alongside one another in my memory: women and the traditions they carry. The pepper itself became more than an ingredient. It became a symbol of resilience, healing, strength and continuity.It represents the heat required to endure difficulty, but also the warmth that comes from being cared for. It represents something that can be consumed, shared, planted, harvested and passed on. In the work, I use it to ask what we inherit from the people who raise us and what we, in turn, carry forward. Ata Ire is therefore not an attempt to document Yoruba culture exactly as it exists. It is my interpretation of the culture I experienced and the memories that remain with me. I am interested in the space between what I remember as a child and what I understand as an adult. The photographs are deliberately constructed. I use the language of fine art and fashion photography to rebuild memories rather than simply record them. The bodies, hairstyles, gestures, colour and placement of pepper become elements within a visual language that allows me to speak about things that are difficult to photograph literally. At its heart, Ata Ire is about women, memory and what is passed down. It is about the women whose everyday acts of care shaped me before I was old enough to understand their significance. It is about the traditions that live quietly inside food, hair, family and community. It is about the strength that can be inherited without ever being formally taught. Most importantly, it is personal. I am photographing things I once considered ordinary because I now understand that they were never ordinary. They were pieces of my childhood, pieces of my culture and pieces of the people who raised me. Through Ata Ire, I am trying to hold onto those pieces to remember them, give them form and to let the fire continue.