Biography
Before studying art, I trained as a tailor and fashion designer. My work today is informed by my interest in textiles and the capacity of clothing to shape identity and the histories, tacit meanings woven into everyday materials
My penchant in textiles revolves around the impact that the second-‐hand clothing market has had on the West-‐African textile industry, local consumption of foreign goods and cultural identity.
Interested in confronting notions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘cultural contamination’, I work with large-‐scale sculptural forms and installations for which these second-‐hand textiles are the primary material. Anchored in my experience growing up in Nigeria, I engage these West African textiles from the basic premise that there are consequences on the perception of one’s identity when the language of the fabrics one wears is changed fundamentally. In 2010, I travelled to Dakar, Accra and Bamako to begin to consider the ways in which these consequences appear in specific ways in each place.
I re-‐purpose used clothes, paper, plastic bags and other recycle materials to construct sculptural elements. Through techniques ranging from cutting, weaving, tying and sewing, dyeing, printing, I question Nigeria’s increasing dependence on outsourcing for textile product.
My recent works are often presented with an accompanying fictional historical context, in the form of a written narrative or label. This text tells an historically plausible narrative, placing my work alongside a retelling of facts about Nigerian weaving, the patterns of the European clothing trade, anthropology, colonialism and as well as playing with notions of provenance, origin and historical fact.
