Gasali Adeyemo learnt to make patterns in cloth by watching his mother in Ofatedo, Osun State. Today, the Yoruba textile artist combines an international teaching career with a studio practice built around the indigo dyeing traditions she introduced to him.
His next advertised engagement at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, runs from 12 to 15 November 2026. Students will prepare an indigo vat and work with wax, stitching and raffia, learning the meanings of designs alongside the practical methods.
Adeyemo's route into those classrooms began with household instruction, followed by formal training in Nigeria and opportunities to exhibit abroad. His current practice brings together finished textiles, workshops and cultural education, with traditional Yoruba cloth at its centre.
In a welcome letter for a 2025 Ghost Ranch workshop, he described himself as the third of five children from Ofatedo. His earliest lessons involved learning what patterns represented before he began making them himself.
“My mother was the most important teacher in my life, she gave me a love of fiber art,” he wrote. She first allowed him to prepare cassava paste, then taught him adire eleko and tie-dye. Later, at the Nike Center for Arts and Culture, he learnt batik.
The University of Central Arkansas dates the start of his training and teaching at the Nike centre in Osogbo to 1990. Its account of his career describes six years of work there, extending his knowledge of textile processes before his international teaching developed.
A turning point came in 1995, when his work was exhibited in Bayreuth, Germany, alongside that of five other Nigerian artists. Textile Center in Minneapolis records that exhibition in its account of his career.
The following year brought his first journey outside Nigeria. An invitation to the University of Iowa took him abroad for exhibitions and workshops. Further engagements followed at institutions including Snow Farm, Peters Valley and the World Batik Conference.
By June 2023, when Textile Center hosted his lecture, African Blues: My Life in Indigo, Adeyemo was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The talk accompanied a four-day workshop and covered the different resist techniques he uses, as well as indigo's place in Yoruba culture.
His materials produce different kinds of marks. In batik, wax protects selected areas of fabric from the dye. Adire eleko uses cassava paste, while tying and stitching restrict where colour can reach the cloth.
The International Folk Art Market describes his work as both clothing and fabric sold by the yard. Its artist profile explains how raffia bindings can produce circular patterns, while stitching creates lines. Wax may be applied with stamps, stencils or freehand.
That profile also records Adeyemo's interest in younger wearers. Traditional patterns appear on T-shirts as well as other garments, and he describes giving patterned cloth for weddings, burials and naming ceremonies. His work connects the making of textiles with their use in everyday and ceremonial life.
International teaching did not spare him the disruption of the pandemic. In its Arrowmont Connections series, the school described cancelled travel plans that left him working from his home studio instead of leading summer workshops across the United States.
He continued making garments and lengths of cloth, offering new work through Facebook and Instagram. The account documented a change in how he reached customers while travel was interrupted. His studio production continued alongside the teaching career that had taken him overseas.
His textiles have also reached cinema audiences. In May 2023, VOA's Kahli Abdu interviewed him about the batik designs used in The Woman King. The broadcaster's report identified his contribution to the film's textiles, another outlet for the craft he learnt in Nigeria.
His current website presents workshops, studio work and selected collaborations as parts of the same practice. It lists adire eleko, adire oniko and hand-drawn batik among his methods, using natural indigo pigment.
At November's Arrowmont workshop, the advertised programme returns to those processes. Students will work with hand-painted and stamped batik, stitch resist and raffia tie-dye. Alongside preparing and using the indigo vat, they will study the cultural meanings carried by traditional Yoruba designs.
Archive textile illustration, not Gasali Adeyemo or his work: Adire fabrics in Abeokuta, 15 August 2018. Omoeko Media via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped and resized; photographic adaptations retain the same licence.
