In celebrating this year’s International Women’s Day and Women History Month, Yinka Olatunbosun met the multidisciplinary artist, Yoma Emote inside Rele Gallery, Ikoyi where her first solo exhibition titled “There was Once A Traveller” ignited nostalgia, spirit of friendship and migration as well as a sense of historical preservation.
Nine minutes. Not more than nine minutes. It was hard to yank Yoma Emore off from friends and associates gathered inside Rele Gallery to get a view of her stunning intricate pieces inspired by personal experience and incursion. Born in 1997, Emore set a time machine with this show- a first from her as a solo artist- navigating the busy terrain of craftsmanship in Lagos. With There Was Once a Traveler, she carefully unfolds as an intricate cartography of memory, migration, and correspondence, where the materiality of textile becomes a repository of lived experience and historical residue.
Anchored on letters exchanged between her mother and international pen pals during the 1970s and 1980s.
The artist statement reads: “Her body of work transforms epistolary communication into tactile landscapes—maps of intimacy, longing, and the enduring traces we leave behind. Through a process of hand-stitched embroidery, screen-printing, and layered textile compositions, the series enacts a speculative archaeology of epistolary exchange – inscribing the affective and bureaucratic traces of yearning, diasporic movement, and deferred connection. This body of work foregrounds the epistolary as a mode of historical transmission, positioning the act of letter-writing as both an intimate ritual and an archival mechanism for mapping transnational kinships.”
Was Emore looking for old love letters? Maybe. But one thing was certain: At the heart of There Was Once a Traveler is a story that speaks to the power of chance, connection, and the way letters collapse time and distance. Among the many correspondences Emore uncovered in her mother’s archive was one with a German pen pal, Josef. A two-year-old letter Josef wrote to Emore’s mother would travel with her to France, where she would fortuitously meet her pen pal. The surreal encounter, years in the making, marked the beginning of their real-life friendship.
Here is an excerpt of the chat with Emore.
This is an impressive body of work. It’s hard to tell that the artist is so young considering the timeline captured in the visual storytelling. How was this experience for you, knowing that this is deeply personal?
The entire story is an investigation into the art of remembering, because remembering feels like a journey- a never ending journey, but it’s also an exploration into the tracing that we leave as we travel through life. In a sense, we are all chapters journeying through life, and we’re all leaving traces of ourselves and the relationships that we make, the people that actively make even pieces of ourselves, with those people that inadvertently create this path of our lives. It’s also an exploration into the intimate connections that she had with these people, and I’ve explored them through fabric works. They’re also map by so every single piece is actually a map. It’s a map of a visual space that has been created through a blend of the places where the letters came from and where she would write from.
I gathered that you happened to be one of the Young Contemporaries showcased by this gallery earlier this year, which is interesting. I didn’t get to see that show so I would like to know- your desire to use the fabric, where does it come from? Were you inspired by a particular artist?
I started using textiles at university. Actually, initially I had wanted to become a painter, and then I fell in love with fabric halfway through my second year at university. But I also fell in love with artists, so that’s where I learned how to combine text and fabrics. They are very professional talents.
How many works do you have in this show?
12.
Great. What’s the time frame like from the initial idea to execution?
It came about two years ago, in terms of creating them and all.
One of the works at the show
Can you take us through the journey of what it takes for you to create this apart from the fact that you were inspired by those letters, were there some elements of you know, perhaps your own perspective to the storytelling that came into play?
I like to act as a ghost writer, because I thought he wrote text. I’m telling you a story, right? I’m the middle man in the way. Then I think that’s the interesting thing about working with archives. You have this sense of responsibility to the person, to the person who’s exactly resident, whose objects that you are, you’re handling. For example, this is the one with the 1978 those three pieces over there inspired by this relationship that she had with her childhood friend, you know, she was away in England, and he was, you know, back when they were worried, and they would send letters. And in one of the letters that he eventually sent to her, he detailed the 1970s student events that happened. He was in Zaria at the time, and when I read the letter, it was such a heavy letter that initially I didn’t have a hearing because I felt, no, this is a bit too heavy. I should keep it light. But then you start to think about your responsibility, because at the end of the day, I wasn’t acting as an archivist, right? You start to think about responsibility, not just the word out of the story itself. Unfortunately, when I read it, I can’t even see it, so I have to do it.
You know, we’re at the age where it’s almost as if we are forgetting that we ever did letter writing. You do emails, we do fast messages and all that. Would you say that this work is a statement, you know, promoting the culture of documentation?
We learn to write to each other again with as much emotion as you know, they used to. I find instant messaging a bit cute nowadays. But I am somebody who’s quite sensitive, like, if you wrote me a letter note, for example, I tend to keep it. For example, I have this university card, yeah, one of my friends is Chinese. And I kept it just because it was handwritten, and that in the handwritten and the intimacy in that is wonderful. Yes, it’s Elizabeth’s handwriting that I’ve used to create this map in that piece.
I also noticed your technique has some elements of embroidery. Oh, wow, that’s interesting. Did you have to learn that outside of the arts or-
No, I think it’s just something I figured out on my own for my career. Well, yeah, it’s practice. You just go, you like the way it looks. Okay. You stick with it, or you try something else, yeah.
What other areas are you looking to explore? What other areas would you go back to base? You go back to paint?
I think my work is sort of like a combination of everything. It’s not just fabric that I use there. I use acrylic painting.
I see Bendel State somewhere there. You know, these works bring a bit of nostalgia, giving me some 80s vibes. Did you have to do some other research, apart from looking at these archival materials at your disposal?
Yes, yes. So this is like the primary experience, yeah. Then I also did secondary research, like cross referenced all the information that I found, finding the lenses, but also to understand the scope of the environment that these lenses were written in. So, yeah, primary research, and then secondary also.
