Laolu Numa is a transdisciplinary artist whose work bridges the worlds of metalsmithing, avant-garde fashion, and contemporary sculpture to explore Afro-Atlantic cosmologies. Originally trained as a software engineer, he began his artistic practice in 2023 as a response to the rigid structures of Western technological and humanist thought. His latest collection and sculptural installation, BLACK RUPTURES, serves as a speculative intervention into the Western mode of being human by problematising the fantasy of the self-contained individual, proposing a pluriversal future through jewellery that alters the wearer’s sense perception and relationship to the world.
Current Obsession: Could you tell us the story behind your graduation project and what drew you to the subject?
Laolu Numa: My graduation project is basically a call for a different future/imagining. I’ve lived the last decade and a half of my life in the USA, and the feeling of nihilism within late-stage capitalism was overbearing; my graduation project suggests an emergent cosmology that asks us to construct new realities with different foundational understandings of the possibilities of the world and our place within it. I was drawn to the subject of my graduation project from various experiences. My experience as a Black immigrant in the USA shaped the questions I wanted to ask about how Western society was structured on a deeper level. This curiosity got me into Black critical theory when I was a college student in the USA a decade ago, an interest that continued even after college. Coming from southern Nigeria, I was also deeply curious about the stories of my ancestors, their ways of being, and knowledge systems. These interests combined with my interest in contemporary fashion and sculpture form the ingredients that make up the diverse subject of my graduation project.
CO: Beyond the gallery, where do you see your work taking root and finding its life? Who do you hope to reach with your work?
LN: On runways, in people’s homes – I make Objects as well – and public sculptures. I hope it reaches people who still want to dream of different futures, although the current zeitgeist portrays that as impossible. I want to make work that reminds people that reality is constructed and we still have a chance to construct it anew in ways that work for everyone, and that there is no single determined way life has to be lived; the Eurocentric standard is made up, and there are multitudes of ways of being and knowledge systems that are valid in their own right.
CO: What’s your favourite studio ritual?
LN: Clearing my workspace every morning and writing down all that I want to do for that day (I never finish everything on the list). A close second is my afternoon smoke breaks before the evening work period; I feel most focused in the workspace then, especially because the studio tends to be empty by then.
