MYbeautifuldarktwistedfantasy
Bed-Stuy Model and Nigerian ex-pat Folasade Adeoso expands her artist’s life into collages and fashion design

by alice forstead

Model, artist, and businesswoman Folasade Adeoso spent her first two years in Nigeria before her family relocated to Canada. Now living and working in Bed-Stuy, she has left a diversity of work in her wake, including an expanding collection of mixed-media collages, though restlessly resists being pidgeonholed, either professionally or creatively. While continuing to live the life of the oft-photographed, she also and most recently launched a line of head wraps and accessories entitled 1953 (the name stemming from the year her Nigerian dad was born). Curated by Adeoso and based in Brooklyn, the brand “expresses the confidence, diversity, and creativity of women, with integrity,” a company statement explained. Pieces are handmade by the artist, using African wax fabrics selected in Nigerian markets, and “give voice to our individuality and beauty. Each head wrap and accessory is unique, representing the diverse African cultures and the women at the heart of these traditions.”

Also a digital designer, Adeoso featured her collages in a first pop-up show in the borough last year, and is seeking expanded markets for the entho-photography-based pieces, which dovetail wry statements about beauty and its commodification into simple and joyful dreamscapes. Designer’s graph lines that direct the eye to specific focal points are often a feature, as are clipped words and photos of flowers used to obscure faces and other body areas. Her pieces, as she put it, “interrogate themes of sexuality and womanhood, fame and privateness, exoticism, and African diasporic identity.”

Folasade Adeoso
allthingsfolasade.tumblr.com / 1953collection.com