Image: Dionne Zhao

“How You Dey”

Friday 11 July - Saturday 23 August 2025  

Preview: Thursday 10 June from 6pm - 8pm

Wednesday - Saturday, 12pm - 5pm

FREE - All welcome

“How You Dey”: A Conversation Starter on Identity, Home, and Wellbeing

How You Dey: Derived from the Nigerian Pidgin greeting meaning "How are you?", this local slang might be the conversation starter, but here it is the openness about one's true feelings on issues around mental health and vulnerability.​ How You Dey is an immersive exhibition based on a series of creative well-being sessions led by artist Abike Ogunlokun, Nelly Ating, Paskaline Maiyo, and therapist Star Moyo for SSAP.

Supported by Arts Council Wales’s ‘Arts and Health Programme’, this exhibition is a collection of week-long workshops in 2024 where participants engaged in photography, zine-making, and body painting as tools for self-expression and communal dialogue.​ Each activity aimed at strengthening a sense of community, vulnerabilities, and representation through stillness and connection with self. The photography session focuses on self-identity, place, and gaze, as evidenced by the familiarity of the images produced. Questions such as How do we see things? and Where might our vision come from? stayed at the centre but also extended to severing self-awareness and artistic expression. The zine workshop explored themes of identity, living in Wales and our connection to the country, as well as mental and physical well-being and community. The face and body painting session demonstrated that the body serves not only as a canvas, but also as a medium for storing memories, transforming them into expressions of beauty, resilience, inspiration, and healing.

This is the third iteration of the wellbeing program under the JAMII project, after two years of testing how art can be used to tackle mental health issues in the community. We observed that How You Dey was not only a conversation starter but also a bridge, offering a space for "coming together."