Folayemi [Fo] Wilson
Folayemi Wilson’s work celebrates the Black imagination as a technology of resistance and self-determination. Using original sculpture, found objects, archival media, sound and video, her process utilizes training in art history and critical theory employing the archive and other research methodologies to mine history for use as material in her creative practice.
She has been a grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts, a two-time recipient of an individual artist grant from the Graham Foundation and received 3Arts awards in 2015 and 2020. Recent exhibits include group shows at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois and Bridge Projects in Los Angeles, and solo exhibitions in NYCxDesign, at The Museum of Contemporary Art and The Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. She is a co-founder and principal of blkHaUS studios, a socially-focused design studio founded in Chicago, now based in Philadelphia. Earlier in her career she worked as a graphic designer and art director in New York founding Studio W, for clients such as Condé Nast Publications, Time Warner, The New York Times, Black Entertainment Television (BET), and Williams Sonoma. Her writing and reviews have appeared in NKA, Journal of Contemporary African Art, and Expansions, a publication of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale among others. Wilson has been awarded residencies or fellowships at ACRE, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Djerassi Artist Residency, Kohler Arts/Industry program, Haystack, MacDowell, Mass MOCA, and Purchase College, New York. Her work is in the collection of the National Museum of African American Art & Culture. An oral history of her work was featured in Bomb Magazine in 2023.