Folayemi Wilson
Nonfiction
Philadelphia, PA
Folayemi Wilson 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. She is a co-founder and principal of blkHaUS studios, a socially-focused design studio founded in Chicago, now based in Philadelphia. 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 in New York, and recently was a 2024 scholar-in-residence at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. Her design work is in the collection of the National Museum of African American History & Culture and an oral history of her practice was featured in Bomb Magazine in 2023.