The Hands of Fellowship and the Spirit of Love

Artist

Yinka Adeyemi (Nigerian, b. 1941)

Date

2011

Medium

Beads on plywood

Dimensions

Work : 20 x 30 in. (50.8 x 76.2 cm)

Credit Line

Hope College Collection

Object Number

2019.63

Label

Yinka Adeyemi was part of the first generation of artists to train at the Mbari Mbayo Workshops in Osogbo in the early 1960s. He later served as an instructor at the Ori Olokun Workshops in the early 1970s, and as an artist in residence at the University of Ife in the 1980s. He is a painter, printmaker and textile artist whose work has remained strongly tied to his Osogbo roots. This image offers a contemporary take on traditional Yoruba beadwork, but rather than stringing the beads and sewing them onto a backing material, the beads are instead glued onto a support board like a mosaic. The mask-like faces and ghostly hands in this composition gives the image a surreal quality that is characteristic of Adeyemi’s mature art.