September 13 – October 25, 2025
Fúnlọ́lá Coker
curated by: Lynne Cooney
opening reception: Saturday, Sept 13 • 4pm-6pm
artist/curator talk: Conversation with artist Fúnlọ́lá Coker and curator Lynn Cooney
Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • 6:15 – 8:00pm
hours: by appointment: email or call 917-715-2877
Everything is a drawing.
A quest for the perfect line,
Pushing and pulling, carving and stamping
Soft pressure creates a gentle path
A heavy hand trundles through
The line is a tool of navigation
Èmi ni atúkọ̀ [I am the navigator]
Everything is a drawing
Drive-by Projects is pleased to present Atukọ̀ (navigator), a solo exhibition by multi-media artist Fúnlọ́lá Coker curated by Lynne Cooney *. This exhibition presents a selection of new works on paper that incorporate drawing and organic shapes made with hand-carved stamps to investigate line as a form of communication.
We invite you to join us to meet the artist and celebrate the opening of our fall, 2025 season.
Atukọ̀ is the Yorùbá word for navigator and can refer to a person, like a pilot or a sailor. In this context, Coker embodies the term as both a noun and a verb. Coker is the artist/navigator using the process of drawing as a means of direction finding, creating meandering lines and stamped shapes as communicative pathways. While her work is not literal to a specific language, Coker’s drawings and sculptures are evocative of the symbolic visual forms found in the cultural practices of her Yorùbá heritage (a cultural group and language in West Africa), such as the intricate braids in West African hairstyles and the stamped symbols embedded in Adire Eleko clothing, an indigo dyed cloth produced by Yorùbá women in southwestern Nigeria. Alongside Coker’s drawings are several sculptures that render similar shapes and lines in three dimensions. While related, the drawings are not viewed as preliminary sketches for sculpture. Rather, her drawings evoke ideas of visual storytelling told through shapes and lines.
*Lynne Cooney, PhD is the Associate Professor of Art History and Director of Exhibitions and Galleries, Montserrat College of Art.
Hours: Thursdays 12 – 4pm and by appointment
For more information: Call or text 617.835.8255
above:
Sketches 1, 2, 3,
2021
Handmade paper and steel
