Tomilola Olumide

Moving between play, remembrance, and engagement with the intuitive and mundane, her practice is process-led and materially grounded. She uses materials as intimate extensions of self, guided not only by their physical qualities but by the stories they carry and the resonance they hold, exploring subjects through tactile engagement, muscle memory, and interdisciplinary methods that span installation, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, literature and performance. Her recent material investigations in glass and copper have deepened her research into kiln-cast vitreous enamel and silversmithing, as evidenced in her 2025 project Ìnù mí dùn.

Her research interests span material culture, craft history, and diasporic identity, exploring how African artists engage with traditional and industrial making processes as sites of memory, cultural continuity, and self-definition. She is interested in craft not only as a material and aesthetic discipline, but as a form of cultural archive, a mode of preserving and transmitting knowledge across generations and communities.

Olumide received a Master's degree in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art, London, and a Bachelor's in Fine Art from the University of Southampton, Winchester School of Art. She was awarded the RCA Sir Frank Bowling in 2024 and a Soho Global Fellowship by Soho House and Creative Futures Collective. 

Her recent projects span exhibitions, residencies, commissions, performances and publications, including Forms & Fable at Filet London, Poetics of Becoming at Royal College of Art, Ìnù mí dùn at RCA2025 Degree Show, I’m in Love with the Metaphysical by Something Different, Fit Notes by Ache Magazine, Radiant at Copeland Gallery, Chronicles of Respite, Communion at The New Art Gallery Walsall & Multistory, Wá wò ó, Spot VR Residency at Stryx Gallery and Pressure x Walk, (Algo|Afro) Futures at Vivid Projects.

Tomilola is the founder of Èfùnsíkú, an African-centred interdisciplinary creative infrastructure project she is building to support African creatives and those across the diaspora She lives and practices between Nigeria and the United Kingdom.