DON’T SPOIL THE FAMILY NAME. I HEARD IT DIFFERENTLY THIS TIME.

I need to confess something small.

Before Niyi Adeogun’s DON’T SPOIL THE FAMILY NAME, I had never been to an art exhibition.

I’ve seen art, obviously. I follow artists. I appreciate the things people make. But actually going into a space somebody has put together for you to spend time with their work? This was my first.

And honestly, I wasn’t prepared for how personal it would feel.

I’d been watching Niyi explore different forms of art on Instagram. His work kept catching my attention, and I thought I had some understanding of what he was creating.

Then I got to Breaking Circus.

Omo.

I realised how much I’d been missing through a screen.

I KNEW THE ROOM. THEN I WALKED INTO IT AGAIN.

Breaking Circus is a space I’ve been in several times.

That familiarity made what Niyi did with it hit even harder. I recognised where I was, but I found myself looking around like I’d never been there before.

The lighting. The placement of the work. The way the room led you from one thing towards another.

There was intention in how you moved through it.

I spend a lot of time thinking about events and spaces, so that stayed with me. Somebody had considered how I might encounter the work before I even arrived.

The exhibition ran from October 23 to 25 in Halifax. Niyi, a Lagos-born multidisciplinary artist, designer and engineer, brought together kinetic systems, hand-moulded sculpture, mixed media and interactive installations to explore inheritance, family expectations, perfectionism and how we’re perceived.

Those ideas sound big when you write them down.

Inside the room, they became surprisingly close.

THE FIRST PIECE FOUND ME QUICKLY.

The first piece I saw spoke to my exact state of mind at the time.

I’m keeping the details of that feeling with me for now. But there’s something unsettling about arriving somewhere to look at another person’s creation and immediately recognising something you’ve been carrying.

You weren’t expecting to meet yourself there.

I also hadn’t anticipated how much interaction there would be with the work. That was the part that blew my mind.

I had to give it attention. Spend a little time. Notice my own response.

And as I moved around, I started paying attention to the other people in the room too.

Some pieces connected with me immediately. Others didn’t.

But then I’d stand back and watch somebody else connect with something I hadn’t found my way into.

That fascinated me.

We were standing in front of the same work, bringing completely different lives to it.

Something could pass quietly through me and land heavily in the person beside me. I didn’t need to feel exactly what they felt to appreciate that something was happening.

There was something generous about being able to witness that.

THEN I HEARD MY PARENTS.

“Remember who you are.”

“Don’t spoil the family name.”

Every time I was about to leave for boarding school.

Those words came back to me throughout the exhibition. I could remember being on the receiving end of them, knowing I was going somewhere my parents couldn’t follow me into every room.

I would be making decisions for myself.

And somehow, the family was coming with me.

At that age, I heard the warning clearly. Behave yourself. Remember where you’re coming from. Whatever you go there to do, please have sense.

You know the speech.

Years later, standing inside something Niyi had created, I found another way to hear it.

What if I gave as much thought to what I could make of myself as I gave to what I might get wrong?

What would it mean to do something worthwhile with my life, with care and honour, and be able to stand beside it proudly?

That was where my mind went.

The family name could carry the pride of something I had taken the time to build. Something I believed in. Something I could look at and say, yes, I gave myself to this properly.

And when you carry that kind of pride in yourself, of course it reaches the people you come from.

That’s my reading of it, anyway.

Niyi gave me a room in which an old sentence could find a new meaning.

I’m grateful for that.

I’D BEEN WATCHING. NOW I WAS PAYING ATTENTION.

I keep returning to the Instagram part.

Because I genuinely thought I’d been taking the work in.

And I had been engaging with what I could see. But being there made me realise how little time I’d given myself to sit with any of it.

On my phone, I could move on whenever I wanted. Another video was always waiting.

Inside Breaking Circus, I stayed.

I had time to recognise something, feel confused by something else, and watch another person have their own moment with it.

I had time to remember boarding school.

That might sound like a small thing, but I think having enough room to remember is part of what made the exhibition so powerful for me.

I arrived with my present life and found an old part of it waiting there too.

NOW I WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING.

The exhibition has left me thinking about what else we could do with the spaces around us.

I already care about bringing people together. Through Million Vibes, through our shows, through all the ideas that keep finding their way into conversations.

But Niyi made me curious about how much further that could go.

How could the room invite people into an experience before a performance even begins? What could they discover by moving through it? What might they contribute? What could stay with them afterwards?

I’m still turning those questions over.

And I want to follow them somewhere.

So if you’re reading this and you have an idea, a space, or something you’ve been trying to figure out how to bring to life, let’s talk.

I’d love to create something that gives somebody else a moment like the one I had in that room.

Niyi, I came to see what you’d been making.

I left wanting to take greater care with what I’m making of myself.

na the yarn be that