From joy to grief and back: Yinka Ilori’s new reckoning

Modern design often veers into the sort of minimalism that comes across as tasteful and sophisticated, but bland. Yinka Ilori has made an entire career doing the opposite.

From landmark public installations to furniture, his dopamine-inducing, color-soaked designs are instantly recognizable and have resonated both culturally, and globally.

But the British Nigerian designer has recently reckoned with grief, devastated by his mother’s passing in 2024.

“For the first time I had to process loss and sadness, when all I’d been preaching for 15 years was joy,” he said.

Ilori is speaking from London, ahead of the release of “Chairman,” a book tracing a decade of chairs, specifically. In his hands, chairs have become vessels for family memories, migration and storytelling, and charged with unusually emotional responsibilities.

There’s the bold, geometric “Ni Akoko Fe,” for example, that celebrates his parents’ migration from Nigeria to the UK. Also featured is Ilori’s first chair, “Two Become One,” a fluid “seatless” form created during his time at London Metropolitan University.

The rocking chair titled “Iya Ni Wura” (“mother is gold” in Yoruba) was commissioned for a charity auction and symbolized “how much she was loved; how she was gold to the community and gold to us as her kids.”

If the monograph sounds like an early retrospective, that’s because it is. “I don’t really believe in having a retrospective when your career is nearly over. Why wait until I’m 80 or 90?” he asked. “I feel like I’m at a midpoint in my career, and I want to look back at what I’ve done and talk about it now…I don’t want to shy away from the idea of being 39 and doing it. Why not?”

Ilori’s practice has always been sprawling in the best sense: a design language that moves from chairs to tableware, fashion, cars, watches, public installations, stages and trophies. The range, he says, begins with London’s sensory layers.

“Growing up in London — I was surrounded by everything from architecture, music, fashion, textiles, sounds, animation. That really impacted how I see the world, and how I show up as an artist and designer — my roots have had the biggest impact in my career.”

But Ilori’s first love, he said, has always been community. That includes his parents, faith and family members who have had to “really dig deep to find resilience even in their darkest times to still find joy…it’s inspiring.”

Perhaps it was that sense of almost impossible positivity that made Ilori’s design so welcomed when he was creating pieces during the pandemic. But beyond the visual uplift and optimistic palette is also an interest in how objects can retain the emotions of people or communities, and how public spaces can invite happiness.

The harder question is what happens when the person most publicly associated with joy encounters grief.

“It felt weird, like I was a fraud,” he said , of what he felt following his mother’s death. “It sounds bizarre what I’m going to say, but there is still joy in loss and bereavement when you really look into it…in all the memories.”

A year testing how joy survives a private rupture has given Ilori’s work a more complex, durable point of view: that joy is not synonymous with brightness, nor just the inverse of sadness. It can coexist with grief, memory and absence.

Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

His mother was obsessed with “collecting objects at home;” watching her taught him how possessions hold memories and stories long after their original use has passed.

“We spend a lot of time talking about transgenerational trauma, but what about transgenerational joy — those seeds of joy that were given to us and that we pass on as rituals to our loved ones and communities?”

The idea was the focus of his TED Talk this August and echoed in the emotional undercurrent of his recent first solo gallery exhibition, “Joy Through Resistance,” at Cristea Roberts Gallery in London. His mother, for example, gave “me so many transgenerational seeds of joy that people are now reaping the rewards of.”

There is an unusual elasticity in Ilori’s prolific practice. He moves with enviable freedom between furniture, object and architecture, art and commerce. This year alone, projects have included collaborations with Rapha, Veuve Clicquot, Bloomingdales, Dunelm, Absolut Vodka, Starbucks and the Portland Art Museum. But Ilori approaches such work with neither the purism nor the coyness that plagues many of his design contemporaries.

“I love working with brands that are open to new ideas and new ways of thinking, and where the work is accessible.”

He is forthright about the economics of collaboration. “Yes,” he added, “the money is a factor” — it makes personal projects possible, provided a collaboration permits genuine exchange rather than a cut and paste application of his visual codes. Personal legacy work can then be funded and developed more independently. For example, the launch of the Yinka Ilori Foundation in 2025 (spurred on by his mother’s passing) aims to put this into practice in underserved communities around the world.

The not-for-profit foundation will co-design accessible play spaces with underserved communities starting with Kenya, Nigeria and London. Its first project is in Lamu, Kenya. The foundation’s model is collaborative: the spaces will not be the result of photogenic solutions delivered from afar, but rather they’ll be shaped by the people who will use them.

He points to research on how play impacts children’s mental and physical wellbeing, and recalls reading that it can even affect children’s hair growth.

Stephen Chung/Milton Keynes Council

“There are kids in the world right now who are not playing at all. All they’re experiencing is war, trauma, neglect. A big chunk of play is missing from their childhood.”

The ability to experiment without immediate consequence; to make a world, dismantle it, and begin again is conspicuously rare for those in violence or displacement, he added.

Perhaps the work of joy is actually not such light work, after all. This is especially true for grown ups, Ilori added. “Sometimes people feel like they need permission to access joy, to play, or to dream.”

“There’s this kind of block — adults are not good at it at all.”

Despite all this, Ilori is still trying to get people to “find beauty in the chaos and the lows.” It can all be an argument for taking imagination more seriously.

Does “Chairman” also make that argument in miniature? A monograph about chairs might sound like a dry act of professional consolidation, but Ilori treats it as an opening: to look at the objects, communities and inherited rituals, and carry them into new spaces. The chairman of dopamine design is still assembling the room, seeing more seeds of joy to plant.

现代设计往往倾向于极简主义，这种风格看似雅致精致，却略显平淡。而Yinka Ilori的整个职业生涯都在反其道而行之。

从标志性的公共装置到家具，他那些能激发多巴胺、色彩浓郁的设计作品极具辨识度，并在文化和全球范围内引起了共鸣。

但这位英国尼日利亚裔设计师最近经历了悲痛，他的母亲于 2024 年去世，这让他深受打击。

“这是我第一次不得不面对失去和悲伤，而我15年来一直在宣扬的却是快乐，”他说。

伊洛里在伦敦接受采访，他的新书《主席》即将出版。这本书专门讲述了他十年来与椅子的故事。在他的手中，椅子成为了承载家庭记忆、迁徙和故事的容器，并被赋予了不同寻常的情感意义。

例如，大胆的几何作品“Ni Akoko Fe”是为了纪念他的父母从尼日利亚移民到英国而创作的。此外，展出的还有伊洛里的第一把椅子“Two Become One”，这是一件流畅的“无座”作品，创作于他在伦敦都市大学就读期间。

这把名为“Iya Ni Wura”（约鲁巴语意为“母亲是黄金”）的摇椅是为慈善拍卖而委托制作的，象征着“她多么受人爱戴；她对社区来说是黄金，对我们这些孩子来说也是黄金”。

如果这本专著听起来像是一部早期回顾展，那是因为它的确如此。“我不太相信在职业生涯即将结束时再做回顾展。为什么要等到八九十岁呢？”他问道。“我觉得自己正处于职业生涯的中期，我想回顾一下自己做过的事情，现在就谈谈这些……我不想回避自己39岁就做这些事情的想法。为什么不呢？”

伊洛里的设计实践一直以来都以广博著称：他的设计语言涵盖了从椅子到餐具、时装、汽车、腕表、公共装置、舞台和奖杯等诸多领域。他表示，这种广泛的涉猎始于伦敦的感官体验。

“在伦敦长大——我身边充满了各种各样的东西，从建筑、音乐、时尚、纺织品、声音到动画。这真的影响了我看待世界的方式，以及我作为艺术家和设计师的创作方式——我的成长经历对我的职业生涯影响最大。”

但伊洛里说，他最爱的始终是社群。这包括他的父母、信仰和家人，他们“即使在最黑暗的时刻，也必须真正挖掘自身潜力，才能找到韧性，最终找到快乐……这很鼓舞人心。”

或许正是这种近乎不可思议的积极乐观，使得伊洛里在疫情期间创作的作品如此受欢迎。但除了视觉上的愉悦感和乐观的色调之外，他还关注物品如何承载人们或社群的情感，以及公共空间如何营造幸福感。

更难的问题是，当公众眼中与快乐联系最紧密的人遭遇悲伤时，会发生什么。

“感觉很奇怪，就像我是个骗子一样，”他谈到母亲去世后的感受时说道。“我接下来要说的话听起来可能很奇怪，但当你真正深入思考时，你会发现，在失去亲人和哀悼中仍然蕴藏着喜悦……在所有回忆中。”

经过一年对个人创伤后快乐如何延续的探索，伊洛里的作品呈现出一种更为复杂、持久的视角：快乐并非等同于光明，也并非仅仅是悲伤的反面。它可以与悲伤、记忆和缺失共存。

Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

他的母亲痴迷于“收集家里的物品”；看着她，他明白了物品如何在最初的用途消失很久之后仍然承载着记忆和故事。

“我们花了很多时间谈论跨代创伤，但是跨代快乐呢？那些被赋予我们，并作为仪式传递给我们所爱的人和社区的快乐种子呢？”

这一理念是他今年八月TED演讲的重点，并在他近期于伦敦克里斯蒂亚·罗伯茨画廊举办的首次个展“在抗争中寻得喜悦”的情感基调中得到了呼应。例如，他的母亲给了他“许多代代相传的快乐种子，人们现在正在收获这些种子带来的果实”。

伊洛里作品丰富，展现出一种非凡的灵活性。他能在家具、物件、建筑、艺术和商业之间游刃有余，令人艳羡。仅今年一年，他的合作项目就包括与 Rapha、Veuve Clicquot、Bloomingdales、Dunelm、Absolut Vodka、星巴克以及波特兰艺术博物馆的联袂之作。然而，伊洛里对待这些作品的态度，既没有许多同辈设计师所特有的那种纯粹主义，也没有那种矫揉造作。

“我喜欢与那些乐于接受新想法和新思维方式，并且作品易于理解的品牌合作。”

他坦率地谈到了合作的经济因素。“是的，”他补充道，“资金是一个因素”——它使个人项目成为可能，前提是合作允许真正的交流，而不是简单地复制粘贴他的视觉符号。这样，个人传承作品就能获得资金支持，并能更独立地发展。例如，他于2025年成立的Yinka Ilori基金会（其成立的契机源于他母亲的去世）旨在将这种理念应用于世界各地服务不足的社区。

这家非营利基金会将与服务欠缺的社区合作，共同设计无障碍游乐空间，项目将首先在肯尼亚、尼日利亚和伦敦启动。其首个项目位于肯尼亚的拉穆。该基金会的模式是协作式的：这些空间并非来自遥远的、徒有其表的精美设计，而是由使用者共同塑造。

他指出有研究表明玩耍会影响儿童的身心健康，并回忆起曾读到过玩耍甚至会影响儿童的头发生长。

Stephen Chung/米尔顿凯恩斯市议会

“现在世界上有很多孩子根本没有玩耍的机会。他们经历的只有战争、创伤和忽视。他们的童年缺失了很大一部分玩耍的时间。”

他补充说，对于那些身处暴力或流离失所的人来说，能够进行实验而不必立即承担后果；能够创造一个世界，将其拆解，然后重新开始，这种能力是极其罕见的。

或许，获得快乐并非易事。伊洛里补充说，这一点对成年人尤其如此。“有时人们觉得，他们需要得到许可才能获得快乐、玩耍或做梦。”

“这里有个障碍——成年人根本不擅长解决这个问题。”

尽管如此，伊洛里仍然试图让人们“在混乱和低谷中发现美”。这一切都表明我们应该更加认真地对待想象力。

《主席》是否也以微缩的形式阐述了这一论点？一本关于椅子的专著听起来或许像是枯燥的专业总结，但伊洛里却将其视为一个开端：审视椅子的物件、社群和传承的仪式，并将它们带入新的空间。这位多巴胺设计的主席仍在构建空间，播撒更多快乐的种子。