Artist: Lola Awolowo

A painted, and embroidered portrait of a blue-eyed Black woman, on a background of collaged book pages. Her face is circular and tilted and she has short black hair. Her necklace and earrings are beads embroidered onto the piece’s surface. Her outline has been stitched in yellow thread.

BA Design Crafts
University of Hertfordshire

Lola is a textile artist and painter.

Lola’s practice works across drawing, painting, sculpture and textiles. Her pieces are inspired by the faces and stories of people she meets. Impressions of these individuals are collected and housed in her memory, waiting for the right moment to be selected for an artwork, enhanced and embellished by Lola’s imagination and style. Working directly onto fabric with paint and pens, her creative process plays with scale, appliqué and stitch, and incorporates African and European printed textiles. Lola’s final artworks are powerful and statuesque, a bold embodiment of their new characters.

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lolafunto

Clockwise from top left: Untitled; The Green-Eyed Physician; The Season; Hand-Made Garden

In:Site 2024

Lola was one of 14 artists selected to produce a participatory, drop-in workshop for a public audience at In:Site 2024. Exploring the theme of care, their workshop developed and incorporated the ideas, techniques, approaches and materials used in their own practice.

Artist Lola Awolowo smiling, in conversation with a little girl and her teddy bear.

Photograph by Hayley Salter

Lola’s project, My Joy, invited people to work with Lola to add their own characters or embellishments to a collaborative textile piece, using a range of simple and bold techniques that she uses in her own work.

A close up of hands embroidering around a rubber band, which has been folded and secured in its shaped with white and yellow embroidery thread.

A close up of a hand, nails painted red, next to a rose-like structure constructed out of colourful and patterned fabric.

A close up of hands stitching around a red rubber band with yellow embroidery thread, onto a black and pink tie-dyed piece of fabric.

A close up of hands unravelling pink embroidery thread. On the table lies an embroidery hoop, with a sheet of white canvas fabric in it, and a rubber band, secured in place with the pink embroidery thread.

Photographs by Hayley Salter