Sophia-Yemisi Adeyemo

Sophia-Yemisi Adeyemo (b. Burlingame, CA) is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of assemblage, painting, and sculpture. She draws from the visual impulses of non-canonized Afro-diasporic practices and the lineage of painting to create devotional and disobedient objects. Her work depicts a lexicon of painted moments that reference digital media and attempt to intercept our passive role as witnesses, while sculptural elements—fashioned from found and discarded materials—take on the cloak of these paintings. Inspired by her late father, Adeyemo considers her practice to engage in Black fugitivity: a lineage of maneuvers born of scarcity, urgency, and tact, working in opposition to exploitative systems. Understanding grief as a site of radicalization, Adeyemo’s work seeks to transform our individualized mourning into a collective force of resistance.

Sophia-Yemisi Adeyemo received a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Visual Art from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Her work has been exhibited at Marianne Boesky Gallery, BRIC, c1760 Gallery, Picture Theory Gallery, The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, and the Muskegon Museum of Art, among others, and has been featured in publications such as Hyperallergic, Art Cube, and “Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen”. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at BRIClab Contemporary Arts Residency, Lazuli Residency (now Radical Imagination Projects), and the New York Academy of Art. Adeyemo was the 2024 recipient of The Real Art Award.

Instagram: @sophia.yemisi.adeyemo
Website: https://sophiayemisi.art/