Yemi Awosile is a textile designer who lives and works in London, with a special interest in materials, technology and the visual arts which she expresses through textiles and material processes. Her research builds on a sound project involving the use of acoustic textiles and multi-media print techniques presented at the Royal Festival Hall in Autumn 2014, featuring urban Nigerian city soundscapes by Lagos based artist Emeka Ogboh. In her research Awosile looks at the emergence of new sub-cultures created through virtual space and imagined proximity, enquiring into the migratory movement of people, exploring unexpected parallels through textiles, technology and audible soundscapes.
Awosile’s Stanley Picker Fellowship project is informed by African sub-cultures rooted in an urban village in Delhi. Like most urban environments it is in a constant state of flux. The principle motivation for the project being to explore the social significance of textiles and its capacity to express collective narratives. The aim is to create a textile collection which reflects creative dialogue between different social groups. The process of developing the collection will entail a study of cyclical patterns of activity from within the garment trade. Many of the Nigerian social groups are involved in the garment trade so the project includes a wider look at the African Diaspora. Part of the research will be recorded through audio soundscapes presented through experiments using acoustics. The second strand looks at the social implications of cross cultural unions connected to the notion of identity.