Yemi Awosile was born in London, England to a family of Nigerian descent in 1984. She studied at Chelsea College of Art, before training in textile design at the Royal College of Art (2003–06). Awosile’s textiles and installations are inspired by her Nigerian roots and explore cross-cultural identities and her personal experiences as part of the African diaspora. She experiments with a mix of techniques, such as multimedia printing and acoustic textiles.
Textile artist Yemi Awosile was born in 1984 in London, England, to a family of Nigerian descent. Growing up in north west London, her creative influences were shaped by the local environment and the second-hand markets on Goldborne Road and Portobello Road. She trained in Textile Design at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art (RCA, 2003–06), during which time she investigated novel applications and designs for cork. In 2011, her work was featured in the exhibition RCA Black at the RCA, which showcased pieces by Black artists who had attended the RCA over various decades.
Awosile’s artistic practice draws upon cultural insights, predominantly expressed through textiles and print materials. In her creative process, she repurposes everyday items to develop fabrics that ‘evoke a sense of place’ (Art Connects Us). Her versatile, experimental work, inspired by her Nigerian roots, goes beyond conventional textile design, as demonstrated by her 2014 sound project at the Royal Festival Hall that blended acoustic textiles with Nigerian urban soundscapes. Symbolism plays a significant role in her work, but Awosile believes that African wax print style represents only a small aspect of a much more complicated context. She explained that ‘Often when you mention African textiles, a specific visual aesthetic associated with traditional artisan crafts comes to mind. However, African textiles and storytelling encompass so much richness, and I'm intrigued by the potential future of African textiles’ (It's Nice That). While her designs may not conform to the prevalent perception of African textiles, they are similarly imbued with narratives and personal significance, often generated during the actual creation process. For instance, the patterns in her Digital Native project, a collaboration with De La Warr Pavilion and Thornwood Care Home, originated from workshops she conducted, aiming to creatively connect older generations accustomed to handcrafted techniques with younger 'digital natives'.
In 2015, Awosile was awarded the Stanley Picker Design Fellowship, which allowed her to visit Dakar in Senegal and Delhi in India. Fascinated by the social implications of cross-cultural identities, she gained a fresh understanding of Senegalese textiles from a modern African art point of view and examined the social structures that support art and design practices. The journey also prompted inquiries regarding various approaches to establishing new platforms for sharing and creating work. Awosile explained that ‘for me, ‘cloth’ serves as a crucial catalyst for sparking conversations about collective narratives and identity, particularly as in today's manufactured world, it is less usual to look at a piece of cloth and pinpoint its geographic origin’ (Designed by Women). In Delhi, she collaborated with a group of young people and Indian artist Aastha Chauhan from Khirkee, an urban village within the larger city, characterised by enterprising initiatives and a culturally dynamic neighborhood. She also came into contact with the local African community and explored the subculture founded on the vibrant fusion of African and Indian influences. In both Indian and Nigerian cultures, print served as a principal medium for facilitating storytelling through imagery and process: Awosile experimented with and reinterpreted traditional Indian and Nigerian block-printing methods to generate new patterns that played with historical and contemporary depictions in popular culture. The Fellowship culminated in her debut solo exhibition, titled Orishirishi, at the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston Unviersity in 2017. The exhibition's title came from a Yoruba word found in Awosile's family tribe's lexicon, loosely translating to ‘a variety of different things’. Awosile showcased textiles as a means of retaining control over one's identity, considering materials as an ‘assembly of experiences’ (Stanley Picker Gallery). Her work revealed unusual, cross-cultural connections and delved into the migratory movement of people. Her textiles categorised materials as a compilation of experiences and included both fabrics and, for the first time, garments created using a mix of techniques, such as multimedia printing and acoustic textiles.
In 2021, Awosile collaborated with Kingston University Library on a project that centered around her personal experiences as part of the African diaspora. The installation, Gele – the Yoruba term for a women's headdress – incorporated cotton dyed using traditional indigo dye pits in Nigeria and fabric pleated by skilled artisans in England. The pleats evoked memories of the African headdress worn by Awosile's mother, while the arrangement of her work to resemble misaligned clocks alluded to both the partially overlapping time zones between Nigeria and England and the time required to master a craft. Awosile served as an Artist-in-Residence for the Tate Britain and Tate Modern Schools and Education program (2017–18). She is a textiles lecturer at Loughborough University and a visiting tutor at the University of the Arts, London. In the UK public domain her work is represented in the Crafts Council Collection.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Yemi Awosile]
Publications related to [Yemi Awosile] in the Ben Uri Library