2019 Emerging Voices shortlist artist Bukola Koiki is a Nigerian-American multidisciplinary artist employing fibers, paper, video, and unusual materials to examine her own experiences of being a cultural hybrid and the daily battles of existing in that liminal space as a way to reclaim lost memories and to resist and collapse the single-story of immigrants and other disenfranchised peoples. Her work often confronts viewers with their inherent biases of the “other” through an exploration of identity and history through language, employing unexpected materials, and interactivity. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in Morristown, New Jersey, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and in numerous galleries in Portland, Oregon (the Portland Building Installation Space, Nationale, PDX Contemporary Art’s Window Project, Rainmaker, Indivisible, PAGE Space gallery, and more). Her work has also been featured in print in Surface Design Journal and online in Art 21 Magazine and Art Practical.

Bukola recently completed the Haystack Open Studio Residency in May/June 2018, completed the Rainmaker Summer Residency (Portland, Oregon) in 2016, and was awarded a RACC Professional Development Grant in the same year. She received an MFA in Applied Craft + Design from Oregon College of Art and Craft and Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2015 and a BFA in Communication Design from the University of North Texas in 2006. She is the AICAD teaching fellow and visiting assistant professor of printmaking at Maine College of Art.

Listen to Bukola's object story: