Yemisi Wilson:

Material of Memory

Yemisi currently lives in Stockholm but has worked in Pietrasanta since 1999. She lived here for 15 years and creates in marble, granite and bronze.

Yemisi's love of animals started at a young age and they are frequent theme in her work. Yemisi had four aquariums in her room as a child, and tells us why she finds the animals’ anatomy so fascinating. 

She studied the anatomy of elephants, hippos and rhinoceros in depth and finds in them a testament to ancient times.

This interest really comes to life in the foundry, where we watch the final patinas being applied to her series of hippos, each piece brought to life through a distinct choice of colours.

(Please could you send the original photo? We used one from Instagram as an example, but it includes the arrow icon)

Yemisi talks through the process from when she brings her models into the foundry and explains the lost wax process.

She also shows us her current series of female torsos and tells us about her grandmothers, and her passion for depicting strong independent women in her sculptures.

Yemisi works with a range of stones, including marble, Swedish granite, Indian granite, Swedish porphyry and Spanish alabaster, and explains how each of them need different tools.

Recently, she completed a public commission at Bleket bathing place in Tjörn, Sweden, carving directly into the existing granite. She reveals to us how she approached working with this community in another part of Sweden from her own, and giving them something memorable which also blended into their environment.

Yemisi was attracted to the challenge of drawing monkeys when she saw how fast they moved. She created a series with a new angle on the old fable of the three monkeys, reversing the original moral this time to encourage listening, talking and expressing. She hopes that listening and speaking out can help resolve modern day issues in society. 

(We would love to feature photos of your three monkeys here—please do send them over when you can.)

For this episode we met Yemisi Wilson at Fonderia Versiliese, founded in 1975 in the centre of Pietrasanta. This family-owned foundry is now run by the three brothers Tiberio, Franco and Gabriele Lucarini.

yemisiwilson.com

instagram.com/yemisiwilson

Fonderia Artistica Links:

fonderiaversiliese.it/en/homepage-eng

instagram.com/fonderia_versiliese