People used to have to cross the road to avoid Battersea’s railway underpass. It was the kind of area that a city learns to ignore; it was dilapidated, dimly lit, and sandwiched between pricey penthouses and council estates. Yinka Ilori painted it after that. People abruptly stopped, raised their heads, and sensed something. This change from avoidance to engagement, from gray neglect to something noteworthy, is not a coincidental aspect of his work. It’s the whole idea.
Born in 1987 to Nigerian parents who had relocated to London in the mid-1980s, Ilori grew up in Islington, surrounded by color in a city that didn’t always allow it. His parents dressed their kids in colorful Nigerian fabrics as a way to preserve a connection to a distant place rather than as a fashion statement. Almost all of Ilori’s design choices can be traced back to her early learning about the symbolic meanings of color, including grief, identity, celebration, and belonging. Without that specific upbringing, the work might look completely different in that Essex Road estate with neighbors from Ghana, Turkey, Greece, and Nigeria. Or perhaps it wouldn’t even exist.
The accuracy with which Ilori employs color is what makes his work genuinely fascinating—and genuinely political, even when it seems to be merely joyful. He’s not doing any decorating. In the traditional sense, the Thessaly Road bridge was not a beautification project. It was an effort to provide a common reason for two socially and physically distant communities to coexist in the same area. There was a lot of crime. There was little pride. Giving locals something to be attached to rather than something that was forced upon them was the key to the transformation. It may not seem important, but that distinction is crucial.
This place has a longer history that is worth taking into account. Most people are unaware of how long the controversy surrounding color in public architecture has existed. State planners in East Germany experimented with color in residential blocks in the middle of the 20th century, not as a means of artistic expression but as a means of fostering Lebensfreude, or “joy in life,” among residents of prefabricated housing. In retrospect, the irony is apparent: color is used from above to evoke a sense of flourishing. Some historians saw it as a minor act of protest when locals eventually started painting their own balconies in colors that defied the approved schemes. The body desires to select its own happiness. It doesn’t appear that this instinct has diminished.
Ilori’s strategy goes the other way. Schools, parks, underpasses, basketball courts, and other community-led projects that truly belong to the people who use them are among his most significant endeavors. Children between the ages of five and eleven created billboards that were recently placed throughout London as part of a project with the creative agency BUILDHOLLYWOOD. Even with the best of intentions, it’s difficult to ignore how different that feels from the color imposed by an institution.
According to him, his commercial work, such as Veuve Clicquot at Milan Design Week, a textile collection with North Face, and installations for Apple during Black History Month, coexists peacefully with public practice. He argues for accessibility, and it makes sense. Particularly in the areas where he was raised, brands have a reach that galleries frequently do not. It remains to be seen if that tension ultimately results in something more complex. The colors continue to rise for the time being. And that still seems like a position worth taking in a world that seems more interested in constructing walls than painting them.
