About this speaker
Funlola Coker is Nigerian by birth. She moved to Memphis, TN in 2007 and has since called it home. She is a jeweler and metalsmith working from her home studio. In 2011, Coker received a BFA in Sculpture and a minor in Art History from Memphis College of Art. She is fascinated by history, the evolution of culture and storytelling. Coker’s current work explores her experience as an immigrant. The sense of losing her identity and blending into a new society so completely that her culture feels lost and forgotten, almost like a past life. She translates these ideas into jewelry and tangible objects, drawing from rituals surrounding loss and mourning.
Her wearable collections are influenced by North African architecture, West African textiles and the futurism of science fiction. Bold colors, patterns and unconventional shapes are present in these pieces. She believes that jewelry is a form or adornment, reserved not just for women, but for anyone with the desire to don a pair of earrings, a cuff or more.