Jamilla Okubo

Nationality: Kenya/Trinidad/United States
Studio: Jamilla Okubo
Technique: Textile printing

Jamilla Okubo was born in 1993 in Clinton, North Carolina and grew up in Washington D.C. She holds a BFA in Integrated Design from Parsons the New School of Design. Her work is influenced by African culture and her experiences as a black woman living in the United States. Okubo explores themes of identity, empowerment, and representation through the creation of textile pieces across collage, painting, and storytelling. Inspired by Kanga fabric, a colorful, rectangular fabric cloth worn in Africa, she creates her own patterns in reference to the history, mythology, and vernacular of the African diaspora. She often collaborates with fashion brands to produce textile patterns used in clothes.

Yaw Tony

Nationality: Ghana/Canada
Studio: Life Liveth In Me (LLiM)
Technique: Textile printing

Yaw Tony was born in Ghana, and is working in Toronto, Canada as a graphic designer. He trained in Architecture, Graphic Design, and Fine Art, which allow him to create artworks in various forms including textile patterns, architectural designs, digital artworks, and photography. The majority of his artworks is on silk or natural fabrics. Tony’s approach to aesthetics and beauty is an intriguing invitation to explore an eclectic colourful language. Drawing inspiration from West African prints, the textiles read like scenes from a highly stylized picture book, filled with contemporary patterns and plenty of takeaways for urbanites. The patterns, motifs, and details are hand drawn, painted, and then transferred into colour to give them form as geometric figures or narrative pictures.

Nike Davies-Okundaye

Nationality: Nigeria
Studio: Nike Art Foundation
Technique: Textile printing

Nike Davies-Okundaye was born in 1951 in Ogidi-Ijumu, a small village in western Nigeria known for its traditional art industry. She grew up in a family of musicians and craftspeople, who specialised in cloth weaving, adire making, and indigo dying. Adire is the traditional Yoruba hand-painted cloth. Its various designs are combined into larger overall patterns with names full of meaning and history. Nike Davies-Okundaye seeks to re-establish the value of adire as art, and to increase the appreciation of this textile hand-spun and woven locally. For many years, this veteran adire artist has created both adire and batik works that glorify the social practices and the cosmic drama of Yoruba tradition. The prevailing indigo colour of her textiles accentuates the aura, mystery, and beauty of her designs.

Yemi Awosile

Nationality: United Kingdom/Nigeria
Studio: Yemi Awosile
Technique: Textile Printing

Born in 1984 in United Kingdom, Yemi Awosile is a textile designer who lives and works in London. She studied visual arts at the Goldsmiths University and trained in textile design at the Royal College of Art. Her textile works explore the themes of identity, memory, and culture based on a minimalist and geometric aesthetic approach. Awosile has also developed a special interest in space, technology, and textiles and their joint effect on migration and displaced people. In 2014, she created a sound installation at the Royal Festival Hall that combined acoustic textiles with urban soundscapes emanating from Lagos. She used the placement of pattern and colour to echo the musical arrangement of the rhythms of voices against the background music.