Yoma Emore (b. 1997, Nigeria) is a textile artist using fabric as a vehicle for storytelling. The stories she composes with her work often draw inspiration from archival materials and biographical and cultural experiences, in a bid to re-tell and re-imagine stories from the past and how they might still affect the present and be a reflection of it.
Initially studying to become a painter, Yoma attended the University of Worcester, from which she holds a first class degree in Art & Design, Media & Cultural Studies. It was there that she established a visual language for herself, and developed a working practice in painting, print and textiles. Her works incorporate research around post-colonialism, material culture, and the relationship between text and image.
She won the Worcestershire County Council Art Award, in 2017, for her body of work Ceci n’est pas l’Afrique. These large works combined African wax textiles with the printing and painting of text that questioned the relationship between language, representation and the historical appropriation of Western culture into forms of African culture. The works further explored the politics of fabric as an image of national identity and a product of crossbred cultures. In 2018, she earned a Master’s degree in Textile Design from Chelsea College of Arts (University of the Arts London), where she specialized in digital textile printing.
The focus of her practice has since shifted to archives as a subject of, and an inspiration for her work. She demonstrates a particular interest in everyday objects that are indicative of a lived human experience but are intimately specific to a person and family. Her careful analysis of these objects uncovers a pool of untold stories waiting to be discovered and shared. Emore, thus positions herself as a history maker, bringing to light a series of new curated events and marginal stories.
She uses the power of these shared stories to highlight the importance of everyday people and encourages audiences to question their role and place within a particular space and moment in time. Her works engage with the idea of creating new narratives based on evidenced information by considering archives as living testimonies which need to be responded to. In this way, the works become secondary archives themselves and are a repository of memories that contribute to the ongoing preservation of the primary source.
Yoma’s approach to image-making, mirrors the construction and organization of long narrative prose. She presents characters and story settings drawn from her archival collections, and as such divides her bodies of work into chapters that narrate a sequence of events. Her choices of material and fabric are then informed by these stories in an attempt to encapsulate their essence.
In 2023, Yoma was selected to be a part of Rele Arts Foundation’s Young Contemporaries. She currently lives and works in Lagos.