THE RETURN OF MAWU
THE RETURN OF MAWU is a visionary series of images and videos that follows the arrival of 11 ancient deities, divine beings born across infinite dimensions of time and space who now return to Earth to remind us of our true essence. They come to awaken our remembrance of a life beyond fear, a life in sacred harmony with all of creation. With grace and power, these deities offer messages of healing and restoration, guiding us through their timeless wisdom and sacred presence. They reveal pathways toward a more life-affirming world, urging us to embrace our individual and collective responsibility. Through them, we remember that we are never separate but rather a part of an interconnected sacred whole.
These deities ignite higher consciousness and awaken unconditional love within us, weaving us back into right relationship with all sentient beings. No longer conquerors, we are called to rise as humble stewards and guardians of life who honor all beings as we wish to be honored. Recognizing that our fates are intertwined, we are called to co-create a world rooted in harmony, unity, and collective abundance.
Manifested through the elemental forces of earth, water, fire, and air, these deities embody divine feminine energy and sacred fertility. They breathe new life into us, summoning us to heal the imbalances that plague our world. Through vivid color and embodied beauty, they deliver ancient codes and potent cosmic truths that reconnect us to our origins and illuminate the universal laws that govern all existence.
Rooted in the cosmology of the Ewe and Fon peoples and embodied by an Ewe woman, these sacred beings carry the energy of generations. Nurtured and nourished through centuries of devotion, offerings, prayer, and reverence by one of the world’s most ancestral communities. These deities remain alive, potent, and present…sustained by love, fed by devotion, and swift in response.
To honor them is to honor the divine within yourself for there is no separation. They are you. As living embodiments of the creator, the creation, and the act of creating, their messages transcend all boundaries reminding us of eternal truths that defy time, race, class, and culture.
May they guide us back to the sacred knowing within: to love, balance, compassion, empathy, grace, forgiveness, unity, hope, and deep reverence for the Earth and one another. To know them is to know the divine nature of God and her many aspects that live waiting to amplified within you.
POWER TO THE GOD WITHIN
A self portrait series honoring the Gods of JOJO ABOT’s ancestry. Created through profound ceremonies, each stroke, texture and position was guided by the divine herself. A meditative and devotional manifestation, these very personal offerings now become available to us all. May the be as powerful as you call them to be.
Photography, Face Art and edits by JOJO ABOT
© 2025 JOJO ABOT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING
The multidemsional call to collective imagination, expression and liberation in which the divine femine takes center stage.
a GOD OF HER OWN MAKING X LA LOUVER
A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING is an immersive spatial opera performed by JOJO ABOT accompanied by intricately woven layers of voices, dancers, and mesmerizing visuals. This performance is the enactment of a new kind of ritual, one that leads to a trance-like realm in which the senses awaken, and portals open to the divine. This performance coincides with Frieze Week Los Angeles 2024. Presented in partnership with Meyer Sound Labs, ARUP and Cykik.
-SOLO EXHIBITION-
A multimedia experience created by JOJO ABOT. Consisting of sculpture, textiles, film, spatial sound, painting, and performance, A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING brings together manifold aspects of JOJO ABOT’s ever-expanding oeuvre. Unlimited by categorical confines of genre and medium and enhanced by three discrete activations, this exhibition focuses on the transformative and sacred power of the divine feminine, inspiring conversations around collective elevation and engagement with our spiritual selves. Presented in partnership with LA Louver Gallery (Los Angeles, CA)
-WEAVING SACRED FUTURES-
Discussion led by JOJO ABOT with artist and abolitionist Patrisse Cullors, cultural leader Michelle Mitchell, and artist Alison Saar. Weaving Sacred Futures explores the role of creatives, leaders and world builders in creating spaces for free thought, limitless expression, and communal solidarity. This discussion will delve into the potential we have to serve as vessels who channel consciously from the inner/outer spirit realm for the birthing of harmonious and life-affirming futures. It invites us into imagining intuitive and divine feminine-centered systems as foundational elements for sustainable world-building.
LIVE AT REDCAT (Los Angeles)
A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING is an immersive spatial opera performed by interdisciplinary artist, vocalist and composer JOJO ABOT. Accompanied by voices, dancers, and mesmerizing visuals, JOJO ABOT explores the power of new and ancient technologies for collective healing by drawing from her own heritage as an Ewe woman from West Africa. From these influences and histories, a new kind of ritual is born, one that leads to a trance-like realm in which the senses awaken and portals open to the divine.
LIVE AT NATIONAL SAWDUST (NEW YORK)
JOJO ABOT and National Sawdust are thrilled to share with you a world premiere of A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING, as part of National Sawdust’s Season 8 Opening Weekend.
A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING is an immersive opera in which the human vessel serves as a primary instrument and conduit for sound as a healing pathway to the divine. Incorporating both old and new technologies, woman and machine come together in sacred co-creation.
2018 Artist-in-Residence and acclaimed interdisciplinary artist JOJO ABOT returns with the debut of this immersive and otherworldly experience, featuring musician and restorative arts devotee esperanza spalding. Created, directed, and composed by JOJO ABOT during a long season of uncertainty, separation, and global unrest, A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING builds on JOJO ABOT’s exploration of spirituality, and incorporates spalding’s lineages and practices of restorative music.
In A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING, JOJO ABOT— an ewe woman from Ghana, West Africa, references indigenous practices in which the feminine is a conduit for the divine holding space as a portal and point of intercession for all mankind. For the first time ever, National Sawdust's Meyer Sound spatial sound system serves as a tool for inducing a state of expansive presence, awareness, and ascension while amplifying a call to (re)turn to an ancient self that is in unity with all of creation. In this one-of-a-kind performance, JOJO ABOT and Spalding invite you to tap back into a deep love for nature and each other so we can imagine and dare make manifest more harmonious, nourishing and intentional futures.
Program Credits: Created, Directed, and composed by JOJO ABOT Live Performers: JOJO ABOT (vocals) & esperanza spalding (vocals, electric bass, double bass) Recorded vocals: JOJO ABOT, esperanza spalding, Estère Choreography: JOJO ABOT Spatial Sound Design and Live Mixing: Garth MacAleavey, JOJO ABOT Spatial Sound Consultation by Steve Ellison, Meyer Sounds Sound engineers: Garth MacAleavey, Steve Ellison, Konstantin Ladurner p/k/a “Kontent,” and Kyrian Okane; Creative Producer: Nicole Merritt Chari Costumes: JOJO ABOT, House of Aama, NG2_Studios
JOJO ABOT is an interdisciplinary healer exploring evolving themes of spirituality, identity and community through music, film, fine art, fashion, photography and various other expressions. Committed to a philosophy of "Message Over Medium", the artist aims to provoke larger conversations and actions towards collective elevation, healing and harmony. An Ewe woman born in Ghana and currently based in LA, JOJO ABOT offers intimate invitations into the practice of true freedom, love and re-membering through sacred ceremonies of togetherness, reflection and transformation engaging the self as the starting point to unity, universal connection and ascension. Serving as a bridge between the physically and metaphysically, her offerings invite us into a spiritual dance that allows for a coming together of ancestry, traditions and global cultures.
Fresh off the premier of her immersive spatial opera, A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING ft Esperanza Spalding, she expands a blossoming career offering interdisciplinary works in collaboration with the MOMA, Brooklyn Museum, The Ghana Pavilion at La Biennale Di Venezia, Frieze art fair x Theaster Gates x Prada, Hult Center, Armory week NYC, Perez Art Museum Miami and many others. JOJO ABOT has toured with Ms Lauryn Hill, played stages like Afropunk, Roots picnic, Radio city music hall, The Apollo Theater, Kennedy Center, Greek theater and more while being the first unsigned artist to perform live for NYC's Times Square new year's eve concert to over a million people.
Honoring the call to limitless expression, JOJO ABOT remains an exhibiting artist showing works in various solo and group exhibitions featuring sculpture, textile, painting, installations and mixed media offerings that echo her visions of worlds past, present and future. An alumni of the New Museum's incubator program, New Inc, and former resident at National Sawdust, JOJO ABOT continues to develop and present her interdisciplinary practice through POWER TO THE GOD WITHIN and other curatorial projects.
2022
“Music Feature: JOJO ABOT,” Feminist
“JOJO ABOT, déesse de l’afro-hypno-sonic music” Nova/ Radio Nova
“FIP en Trans #1 avec Meule, Ariel Tintar et Jojo Abot,” Radio France
2021
“White Magic” Flaunt Magazine (Online and Print)
“Forced Online, an Opera Festival Searches for Intimacy”, New York Times
2020
“10 Questions with... JOJO ABOT Pop-Kultur,” Berlin
2019
“The Liberation of Jojo Abot” Design Hotels (Further)
“The Austin 100: JOJO ABOT,” wbur
“SXSW Music Preview x NPR,” WFIT
“ON GOD, HOME, AND POWER WITH JOJO ABOT,” AFROPUNK
“Review: Womad Day 2”, Songlines
“Womad Festival Review: an all age, all cultures celebration,” The Times
“JOJO ABOT | “No Part Of The World Owes Me Anything” GRIOT
“Review: Womadelaide 2018: all singing, all dancing festival of joy”, The Guardian
“Interview: Jojo Abot talks about new ‘psychedelic gqom’ track,” Music in Africa
“Taking back the power pushed JOJO ABOT to music,” IOL
2017
“OkayAfrica’s 100 Women” OkayAfrica
“Ghana's Jojo Abot: In the Moment,” Afropop Worldwide
2016
“Review: Bombino, Mokoomba, JOJO ABOT and Others Play Africa Now! at the Apollo,” The New York Times
2015
“Back to Ghana: JOJO ABOT,” BBC
“1xtra: Destination Africa ft Stormzy and JOJO ABOT,” BBC 1xtra
“Terrorism, sexism and corruption, here’s music that covers it all,” CNN