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Lola Olufemi

Staff details

Lola Olufemi

Position

Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies

Department

Art

Email

O.Olufemi (@gold.ac.uk)

is a black feminist writer, curator, researcher and organiser.

My interdisciplinary scholarship and research analyses the aesthetic dimensions of the materialist imagination and its use in the textual and visual cultures of radical social movements, particularly the role cultural production plays in collective resistance and conceptualisations of futurity. I am a member of 'bare minimum,' an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective and volunteer coordinator at The Feminist Library based in Peckham.

Academic qualifications

  • BA English Literature, University of Cambridge 2017
  • MA Gender Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies 2019
  • Practice-based PhD, Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media, University of Westminster 2024

Research interests

I am broadly interested in Marxist and feminist accounts of social life and artistic practice, aesthetic theory, neoliberal state formation, the production of liberatory affect, non-linear temporal and spatial practices, histories of Third World revolutionary movements and Black conceptual art. My work explores the aesthetic dimensions of the struggle against racial capitalism through engagement with archives and archival theory as well as the promises offered by theories of abolition, relation/communalism and experimental poetics. My research expertise relates to Black feminist thought in the United Kingdom, particularly the mechanics of black feminist formations as vehicles for political demand making.

As well as academic writing and research, I write fiction, frequently review the work of contemporary artists and poets and curate public learning programmes which accompany exhibitions. My work has been published in a wide variety of art journals and presses, including ArtReview, Afterall Journal, Architectural Review, Wasafiri, Stenberg Press, Aperture, La Fabrique Editions, Arcadia Missa, Protean Magazine and Poetry Review.

My forthcoming project Against Literature (2026) is a polemic which critiques the conservatism of Anglophone literary cultures and uses the writing practices of guerrilla social movements to argue for a return to politicised aesthetic practices.

Featured publications

Professional projects

HOW DO WE ESCAPE, SUBVERT, DESTROY THE GENDER REGIME?
Learning Programme accompanying Zanele Muholi Faces and Phases Exhibition.
QUEER CIRCLE (2025)

What constitutes a feminist act of resistance?
Learning Programme
SOUTH LONDON GALLERY (2024)

THIS WORLD MAKES US SICK
Programme designed by bare minimum collective
INSTITUTE OF THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS (2021)

LUMEN
Learning Programme co-curated with Alina Khahoo
KETTLE'S YARD (2021)

Abolition: In Defence of Translation
Programme co-curated with Imani Robinson
SOMERSET HOUSE (2021)

Itinerant Imaginaries: Creating Interference and BAN Art Network
Online conference co curated with Roshini Kempadoo
(2021)

In Words, In Action, In Communities
Learning Pack
MOSTYN GALLERY (2021)

Revolution is not a one-time event
Series of online events co curated with Sarah Shin and Che Gossett
SILVER PRESS (2020)

Research projects

2024: THIS IS A TEMPORAL LANDSCAPE, YOU WILL FIND NO DIRECTION HERE
Online digital assemblage co-created by Agnes Cameron

2025: Exhibition: Accumulation – On Collecting, Growth and Excess
'An Accumulation of Care' Learning Programme, Migros Museum

2023: Exhibition: in the meantime, midday comes around
bare minimum collective manifesto video, Kunsthalle Wein

Media engagements

2020: In Conversation with Lola Olufemi
Nell Whitaker, TANK Magazine

2025: Radio Web MACBA: Lola Olufemi
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Podcast

2025: Left Book Club: Revolutionary Feminism Course
Left Book Club

2025: Reading the Crisis: Lola Olufemi and Houria Bouteldja
Stuart Hall Foundation

Conferences and talks

2022: Guest Lecture: “EXPERIMENTS IN IMAGINING OTHERWISE: past (present/future), present (future/past), future (past/present)
The Department of Art History, University of Toronto,

2022: Guest Lecture: Interweaving Structures
Research project in collaboration with the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz Poland, University of Bergen

2022: Keynote: What is the structure of the everyday?
Abolition Feminism: Breaking Free from the Masters Tools Conference, University of Keele

2023: Keynote: "Only the Promise of Liberation"
Centre for Black Humanities, University of Bristol

2024: Keynote: The Uses of the Imagination
Urban Futures Studio, Utrecht University

2024: Guest Lecture: Who and what are feminism's subjects?
Centre for Gender Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies

2024: Guest Lecture: Imagining Otherwise
Education in the Arts Institute, University of Fine Arts Vienna

2025: Guest Lecture: Clearing Space for the As Yet Unseen
The Museum of Impossible Forms, Finland

2025: Keynote: THIS IS A TEMPORAL LANDSCAPE, YOU WILL FIND NO DIRECTION HERE with Agnes Cameron
Centre for Creative Technologies, University of Bristol