Swedish–Nigerian Contemporary Sculptor Based in Stockholm

When I get to Vinterviken, where Yemisi Wilson has her studio, the sun is at its zenith and

the noise of the city seems remote. A creative murmur has replaced it, and Yemisi is standing

outside wearing a protective mask, holding her grinder at the ready. Once inside, we have

coffee and talk about a coming exhibition. And about stone. Yemisi’s knowledge of the

subject is profound, and she eagerly shares it with others. The studio teems with figures in

everything from yellow marble from Sienna to sandstone and gray granite. Their scale runs

from miniatures to the monumental. Yemisi’s sculptures are figurative; the works tend to

manifest naturalistic precision – something that’s extra clear in her animal portraits. Here

there’s an evident connection to the classical Italian heritage in sculpture, which she is also

trained in. She finds it difficult to work with conceptual ideas and avoids sullying her art with

theoretical frameworks. In her work with human portraits in porphyry, she abandoned the

outright figurative in favor of a dialog with abstraction. The properties of porphyry are very

different from those of, say, marble, where the softness invites you to create layers of

playfulness in the lines, in the spaces between the convex and the concave. Porphyry is

brittle yet very hard—the hardest stone Yemisi has ever worked with. It soon became

evident that she couldn’t use her chisel to work sculpturally; instead, she had to rely on

coarser tools and thereby find new entry points into the material. Familiar approaches had

to give way to what the tools permitted. And that’s precisely where Yemisi’s strength lies:

She allows her fascination and curiosity to trump frustration and fear of the unexplored.

However, it would be an underestimation, and partly misguiding, to depict Yemisi’s work as

driven merely by curiosity. Yemisi seems to be impelled by a primal force that she herself is

not always able to control. Her primary guide is her intuition, and she follows it with tools

and instruments without a map or a destination. She’s devoted to her instinct and has

learned, throughout her solid classical training and her many years of sculpting, to remain

humble toward the material she has before her—its heritage, its history, its capabilities, and

its limitations. She keeps coming back to the notion that there’s an ongoing conversation

between her and the material, where both are doing their best to release what seems to

want to get out—what yearns to, has to, tell us something.

There’s a thread connecting how Yemisi approaches each new assignment: she often dwells

in the sphere of memory. She moves between an unconscious collective memory, the history

of the place, and her own connotations of events, occurrences, and places. And, perhaps

most of all, of stone as a bearer of memories. The work with porphyry started out as the

“Great Uproar” that took place in Älvdalen 300 years before Yemisi’s own birth and sparked

the organized witch trials there. The point of entry became an exploitation of stone as a

memorial material and the creation of a posthumous tribute to the women who were

burned at the stake. In the summer of 2018, in Älvdalen’s open quarries, Yemisi found black

rännås porphyry, a stone that in its blackness has streaks of red, bringing to mind glowing

embers. The connection was reinforced by the fact that forest fires were then raging

uncontrollably in large swaths of Sweden, and there was a pungent smell of smoke. But the

porphyry sculptures changed as the work progressed; the material had a will of its own, and

the women who emerged now seem to come from different places in the world—all withdifferent origins, and with their voices filled with unheard stories. The connection to the

origin of the material now feels even closer: porphyry is rock from magma formed at a time

when the earth’s equator went through Älvdalen.

The portraits of women have been given asteroid names taken from mythology, and as your

eye washes over the polished surface, a piece of the universe opens up. The mirror finish

reflects your own image, and, in the same moment, a part of your life heritage is released.

Our history is infused in the material and, if we listen carefully, we can almost hear how

these ignimbrite pillars of cinders continue to crackle and burn. There lies a serene

universality in knowing we are all one, part of something greater. This is what she gets back

to as I leave her in her studio at Vinterviken—making space for what had never been told.

Martina MacQueen

2024 SouthNord presents Yemisi Wilson, Stockholm

2023 Art Gallery ABC, Vällingby, Stockholm

2022 Gallery Artsight, Stockholm

2020 Gallery Studio Animar, Stockholm

2018 Gallery Erik Axl Sund, Stockholm

2017 Gallery Bachlechner, Dietikon, Zurich, Switzerland

2016 Gallery Artspace, Varberg, Sweden

2025 Ekebyhovs Slott, Ekerö — with sculptor Stina-M. Velten

2021 Gallery Nord, Örebro — with painter Arjuna Geir Aasehaug

2017 MuSA, Museum of Sculpture & Architecture, Pietrasanta, Italy — with Maria Gamundí

2025 Vårsalongen, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm

2024 OpenArt, Örebro Biennial

2024 Friends and Acquaintances, Konstnärshuset, Stockholm

2023 Rosendahl Garden Party, Royal Djurgården, Stockholm

2023 Miss Clara by Nobis, The Art of Being a Woman, Stockholm

2022 Art for All, Mörkö Bygdegård

2022 Like in a Mirror, Konstnärshuset, Stockholm

2021 Horisont Hospitalet, Ulleråker Hospital, Uppsala

2021 Landsort — The Island of Sculpture

2021 Oaxen — 26 sculptors in the historical chalk kiln, Oaxen

2021 Ekebyhovs Slott, Ekerö — Swedish Sculptors Society exhibition

2025 The Coast Whispers in Stone — Public commission, Bleket bathing place, Tjörn, Sweden

2025 Municipality of Nacka — Purchase of marble Gorilla Head for Nya Gatan

2023 City of Stockholm Cultural Board — Purchase of 8 sculptures and 3 framed drawings for Huddinge Hospital Emergency Ward

2021 Municipality of Knivsta — Purchase of bronze hippopotamus and yellow marble horse head for public park

2021 Municipality of Uppsala — Purchase of marble rhinoceros for Gottsunda School

2020 Municipality of Eskilstuna — Purchase of two concrete hippopotamuses for elder housing

2019 Seal in Swedish granite for Lars Engelbert (160 × 115 × 104 cm, 1,700 kg)

2019 Three hippopotamuses in onyx and marble with Studio Sem for private collector, USA

2015–2016 Commission for Klövern Julia AB — Concrete, marble, and bronze works for the Tele2 building, Kista

2010 Marble hippopotamus created with Studio Sem for Stephen Heyman, Oklahoma, USA

2024 Cultural Scholarship in Visual Arts, City of Stockholm

2023 One-year work grant, Swedish Arts Grants Committee

2023 Studio contribution grant 2023–2025, City of Stockholm

2025 Millesgården — Alabaster workshop in the Sculptural Yard

2024 Globalstone Workshop — Albalate del Arzobispo (CIDA), Alabaster

2024 Museum of Hallwyl, Stockholm — Alabaster workshop

2023 Gallery Artsight — Alabaster workshops (January and March)

2022 Swedish Sculptors Society workshops — Nyköping and Örebro/OpenArt

2021 Swedish Sculptors Society & OpenArt workshop — Örebro

2020 Konstfack — Art in the Open Space, 30 hp

2019 University of Stockholm — Geology I, 15 hp

2018 Akademin Valand, University of Gothenburg — Artistic Work in the Public, 30 hp

1994–2000 Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, Italy — with 1997–1998 Erasmus Exchange to Facultad de Artes Libres, Granada