Textile Artist & Cultural Practitioner

Textiles as living systems of memory and regeneration.

Hi, I'm Oreoluwa Ayoyimika Odufejo (YÍÍMIIKÁ), a visual and textile artist based in London. My work explores the connections between textiles, culture and the environment, drawing on African textile traditions, natural dyeing and sustainable material practices.

Explore my work View exhibitions

Member, British Art NetworkMember, Society of Nigerian Artists

Portrait of a smiling African American woman artist standing in her studio surrounded by canvases.

Working between fibre, ritual, landscape, and memory.

London, UK · Lagos, Nigeria

I work between memory, material, and place—reinterpreting Yoruba Adire traditions through contemporary textile art, natural dyes, and careful practice.

Material

Memory

Place

Selected practice

Featured Works

Each work begins with material encounter—hand-dyeing, batik wax resist, natural pigments, and recovered materials that carry both personal and political weight.

Artist story

I am shaped by ritual, migration, and the living intelligence of cloth.

Roots

I was raised with an awareness that cloth carries memory. In my family and my wider cultural environment, textiles were never only decorative—they were records of labour, care, ritual, and continuity.

Practice

My work draws on Yoruba Adire techniques, natural dye traditions, and the slow discipline of handwork. I treat each surface as a site of research where pattern, texture, and residue become part of the story.

Urgency

Living between London and Lagos sharpened my sense that material culture is also political. I make work that questions waste, consumption, repair, and the future of inherited knowledge in a rapidly changing world.

My process

Making is how I return to memory and reshape it.

My studio practice is grounded in observation, material research, and the relationship between hand and environment. I work with natural dyes, reclaimed textiles, and traditional dyeing methods to think about time, care, and the ethics of making.

I am interested in the way textiles hold traces of process: folds, marks, stains, repairs, and remnants. These traces tell me that a work does not begin or end with a final form, but continues through use, memory, and transformation.

Through this approach, my art becomes both a response to place and a meditation on belonging. It is about preserving cultural memory while allowing it to evolve in contemporary language.

VOICES

What they said

“I am threading with more care”
Phil Walker CBE — Chair of Council, University of Roehampton

“YÍÍMIIKÁ leverages resources in culture memory and modern technology to pivot Africa’s rich cultural heritage on the global stage”
Osa Mbonu-Amadi — Art Critic, Editor Vanguard

“There’s so much curiosity around sustainability, we just need to keep talking about it and showing people the role they can play. It’s not as daunting as it sounds”
Sam Quashie Idun — Head of Investigations, Greenpeace Africa

“You have been an inspiration, I never fail to be impressed by the talent, the thoughtfulness and sheer commitment…you are an inspiration to us all and give us hope for the future.”
The Revd Nicola Morrison — Methodist Chaplain, University of Roehampton

“What a worthwhile project. Thank you for giving me that opportunity to appreciate and admire the work you are doing. Truly Inspiring!”
Sunitha Narendran — Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor, University of Roehampton

An artisan dyes fabric in a vibrant outdoor setting, showcasing traditional techniques.

Natural dye study · Studio process

Biography

Oreoluwa Ayoyimika Odufejo, professionally known as YÍÍMIIKÁ.

Oreoluwa Ayoyimika Odufejo, professionally known as YÍÍMIIKÁ, is a Nigerian-born textile artist and emerging creative practitioner based in London whose work explores the intersection of craft, culture, and environmental sustainability.

Growing up in Lagos, with a childhood filled with colour, watching his father paint, he was formatively shaped by creative influence. His practice is rooted in Adire traditions and informed by contemporary concerns around identity, environment, and regeneration. His work uses textiles as both material and message.

Over three years, he has developed a body of work spanning exhibitions, cultural commissions, workshops, and public engagement projects across Nigeria and the United Kingdom. His practice reinterprets traditional African textile knowledge through contemporary visual arts, creating works that invite reflection on heritage, belonging, consumption, and social change.

His professional activity includes participation in exhibitions, workshops, and public engagement projects including Bradford African Festival of Arts (UK 2026), Our Heritage UK at Royal Greenwich Festival (2026), the University of Roehampton, the Commonwealth Fashion Council Education Experience (2026), Felabration Global Cultural Festival (2023/2024), the EcoBank Adire Lagos Exhibition (2024), Slow-Eco Textile Workshops, Thread Carefully (2026), and various UK-based artistic and community initiatives.

His work asks urgent questions about what we consume, what we discard, and what we inherit. Through hand-dyeing, batik wax resist, natural pigments, and recovered waste materials, he creates textiles that carry both personal, environmental, and political weight.

Thread Carefully is his most ambitious exhibition to date, a gathering of works that spans frustration and hope, tradition and innovation, grief and celebration.

“I am interested in what a textile can hold before it becomes language—and what it can return to us through touch.”

Artist statement

My work reimagines textiles as living systems of memory, culture, and transformation.

Drawing upon Yoruba Adire traditions, natural dyeing processes, and material experimentation, I investigate how heritage knowledge can speak to contemporary questions around identity, sustainability, and belonging. I view textiles and fashion as a cultural archive, carrying stories, histories, ecological meaning, and social significance.

Through exhibition-led practice, participatory projects, and textile-based artworks, I invite audiences to reconsider their relationship with materials and the narratives embedded within them.

At a time when the global textile and fashion industries face increasing scrutiny around waste, sustainability, and cultural appropriation, my practice offers a different perspective. It demonstrates how indigenous textile knowledge can inform contemporary conversations around regeneration, identity, and responsible material use. The story is not simply about textiles; it is about culture, memory, sustainability, and the role of art in imagining alternative futures.

Events, workshops & field trips

Public encounters.

Collaborative learning, artist talks, public workshops, and field-based programmes that place textile practice within wider cultural and environmental conversations.