k. funmilayo aileru — pronouns: xi, xem, xyr(z) — is a Black Native artist, educator, and organizer who works in the realms of AfroIndigenous futurism(s). xi employs a variety of mediums including digital media, sculpture, and installation to engage concepts and themes such as [ancestral] memory, trauma, and Otherness within celestial time and space. Much of xyr work explores historical, present, and future relationships between technology and Black and Indigenous experiences and embodiment in the West. aileru experiments with reconstructing these paradigms through collective imagination and dreaming.
k. funmilayo aileru was born and is based on the South Side of Providence, RI. xi is an enrolled member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island and a co-founding member of blackearth collective and lab. Currently, xi is a Mellon Visiting Practitioner Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Brown University (Providence, RI). xi is also an inaugural ‘Parkist-in Residence’ for the City of Providence, Artist-Facilitator for the Black Lives Matter Mural Project.