I am a Nigerian (Yoruba-Igbo)—or, if you like, Igbo-Yoruba (Nigerian) who is interested in pictures and writing. I was born in Benin City and grew up mostly between Enugu, Lagos, and London. I like to draw, take photos and write poems, and to talk to people, and to spend time with animals, and I enjoy long walks in the country or city. This website is more dumping ground than portfolio, but I may use it as a blog when I find the wherewithal.
I studied for my BA in Comparative Literature (with Italian) from University College London, and an MA in the same from UCL again, but with more focus on critical and decolonial theory, especially concerning Brazilian modernism, the second time round. In the course of my BA, I did a year abroad at Sapienza University of Rome, where I mostly studied Art History and Film.
With a developing interest in the ‘ineluctable modality of the visual’, I studied for an MSc in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology at the University of Oxford, where my too-close-to-home dissertation was an experimental partial failure about my grandfather’s funeral. And now I am a PhD candidate in Art History at Harvard University, trying to tie everything together somehow.
Besides visual and literary culture, I love every kind of music, but I am especially partial to Fela Kuti, Haruna Ishola, Mal Waldron, Bach, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Angelique Kidjo, Jorge Ben Jor, Alex Turner, Kendrick Lamar, Theresa Onuora, which may be indicative.
yomi.folaranmi@gmail.com
@yomi.folaranmi (instagram)