Bukola Koiki

Bukola Koiki is a Nigerian-American transdisciplinary artist whose work strives to collapse the single-story of the West African immigrant experience by engaging and interpreting the liminal spaces she inhabits between cultures through research and explorations of linguistic phenomena, cultural ontologies, generational memory and more. Her current research and studio work examines and responds to the insidious language deployed to serve and promote the British colonial exploitation of Nigeria's resources and its people via the published texts, commercial advertising, and other media from the late 19th century to 1960. Koiki’s multidimensional fiber works reflect her material and technical curiosity and include hand-pulled prints rendered with embroidered collagraph plates, giant beads employing Nigerian hair threading techniques, handmade and hand-dyed paper, Indigo dyed and hand-printed Tyvek head ties, amongst other explorations.

Koiki received her MFA in Applied Craft + Design from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2015 and her BFA in Communication Design from the University of North Texas in 2006. She was recently nominated for the Textile Society of America's 2020 Brandford/Elliott Award and was named a 2019 Shortlist Finalist for the American Craft Council’s Emerging Voices Award. She has exhibited nationally, including in Chicago, IL, and Portland, OR. Koiki and her work have been featured in American Craft magazine, Surface Design Journal, online on the Art21 Magazine and Art Practical Journal websites and she has been interviewed on NPR. She was awarded the AICAD Teaching Fellowship at Maine College of Art from 2017 -2019 and completed the Fountainhead Fellowship in the Craft/Material Studies Department at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in March 2020.