Graduate Lecture Series: Folayemi (Fo) Wilson
March 04, 2020
MFA Applied Craft + Design is excited to welcome Folayemi (Fo) Wilson for a lecture on her work and practice as part of the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies Spring 2020 Lecture Series.
Folayemi (Fo) Wilson is an object and image maker whose work celebrates the Black Imagination as a technology of resistance and self-determination. Her work explores the Black Atlantic experience though sculptural and multimedia installations presenting speculative fictions that reference history, integrating inspiration from American vernacular architecture, literature and science fiction, 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 methods to mine history for use as material in her creative practice. Wilson earned a MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design with a concentration in Art History, Theory & Criticism. She curated The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft (2010-12), which debuted at the Fuller Craft Museum and traveled to national venues such as the Milwaukee Art Museum. She has been a two-time grant recipient of the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Propeller Fund. Her writing and reviews have appeared in NKA, Journal of Contemporary African Art, among other publications. Wilson has been awarded residencies or fellowships at ACRE, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Djerassi, Kohler Arts/Industry program, Haystack, MacDowell Colony, and Purchase College/SUNY Purchase New York. She is an Associate professor at Columbia College Chicago. Wilson’s design work is included in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt National Museum of Design. She is on the board of the American Craft Council and was honored as a 3Arts awardee in 2015.
Free and open to the public. Can’t be there in person? Watch on our livestream channel: