She was educated at Accademia di Belli Arti in Florence, followed by years of stone carving in Pietrasanta, Italy. These influences are visible in her sculptures, conceptually and in its form as she continues to work with stone in the same way as she has done for the last 25 years. She follows the classical tradition because of its connection with our past and her desire to continue in that language of form that has stood the test of time. Wilson is fascinated by artifacts, the classical and archeology.  Often USING objects in stone, changed by time and erosion.  With these ancient objects, one can see the transition traveled through time and encounters. In some of her sculptures, she leaves the traces of the saw blade or wire in the quarry, or the bruises from the stone industry, these cherished veins and cracks nod toward the life and process that exists within the material and the animals she sculpts, exhibiting the result of joined forces.

Yemisi Wilson is faithful to stone, searching up new rock types, she regularly visits the quarries of Italian marble, Swedish porphyry, and Spanish alabaster to select special pieces to create her unique sculptures. She immortalises the common people like family but also ancestors remembered in her mitochondrial intuition. She is meticulously attentive to the details in her animals, where wild endangered beasts are in her focus.

Wilson’s partnership with this methodology is secure yet constantly evolving. Her lines of work are animals in commissions, are usually whole, the female form, “Huvudskålar” bowls and tabletops in different types of stone with a profile of the human head/face. She also works sites specific to the likes of Augusta Strömberg, when she was invited to work on location. Her practice also includes drawings in charcoal.

 Text edited by: Diana Agunbiade Kolawole