What happens when a designer known for joy encounters grief

Yinka Ilori Finds a More Expansive Meaning of Joy

Healfromzero.com – For years, Yinka Ilori’s work has offered a vivid alternative to restrained contemporary design. His chairs, installations and objects are known for saturated color, animated forms and an unmistakable sense of optimism. Yet the British Nigerian designer is now exploring how that visual language can hold a feeling far less easily expressed: grief.

Ilori’s mother died in 2024, a loss that reshaped the emotional ground beneath a practice built around joy. Speaking from London before the publication of Chairman, a book chronicling 10 years of his chair designs, Ilori reflected on confronting sadness after spending 15 years advocating for happiness through design.

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

The new book examines chairs as more than functional furniture. Across Ilori’s work, they become carriers of memory, migration, family history and personal narrative. The subject is therefore especially fitting for a designer whose objects often act as invitations to share stories as much as to sit down.

Furniture shaped by family history

Among the works included in Chairman is “Ni Akoko Fe,” a striking geometric piece that honors his parents’ move from Nigeria to the United Kingdom. The book also revisits “Two Become One,” the first chair Ilori made while studying at London Metropolitan University. Its flowing, seatless construction pointed early to his willingness to question familiar forms and conventional expectations of furniture.

A more intimate work is the rocking chair “Iya Ni Wura,” whose Yoruba title translates as “mother is gold.” Made for a charity auction, the chair represented the affection surrounding Ilori’s mother, both within her family and her wider community.

“How much she was loved; how she was gold to the community and gold to us as her kids,” Ilori said.

The book has the character of a retrospective, though Ilori sees it as a milestone rather than a conclusion. At 39, he views the project as an opportunity to take stock while his career continues to expand across disciplines.

“I don’t really believe in having a retrospective when your career is nearly over. Why wait until I’m 80 or 90?” he said.

For Ilori, looking backward does not mean becoming fixed in the past. It provides a chance to speak about the ideas and experiences that have already informed his work, while leaving room for new directions.

From London’s energy to a global practice

Ilori’s projects range widely, taking in furniture, tableware, fashion, watches, cars, trophies, stages and public installations. That breadth reflects the layered visual and cultural environment he encountered growing up in London, where architecture, music, textiles, fashion, sound and animation all became part of his creative vocabulary.

“Growing up in London — I was surrounded by everything from architecture, music, fashion, textiles, sounds, animation,” he said.

His roots have remained central to how he works. Family, faith and community are recurring reference points, particularly the resilience of relatives who found ways to sustain hope during difficult times. This connection helps explain why his most colorful projects have never been solely about decoration. Their energy is tied to belonging, collective experience and the possibility that shared spaces can improve how people feel.

That message resonated especially strongly when Ilori was producing work during the pandemic. Bright public interventions and playful objects offered visual relief, but they also raised a broader question: can design preserve the emotional traces of individuals and communities?

The answer became more personal after his mother’s death. Ilori has described feeling unsettled by the apparent conflict between his public identity and private pain.

“It felt weird, like I was a fraud,” he said.

Over time, however, he came to see that sorrow does not cancel joy. Instead, memories, absence and love can all exist within the same emotional space.

“There is still joy in loss and bereavement when you really look into it…in all the memories,” he said.

Passing joy between generations

His mother’s habit of gathering objects in the home helped shape this realization. Watching her collect and keep things showed him that possessions can retain meaning long after their original practical purpose has faded. A chair, household object or artwork can become a record of relationships, rituals and the people who once lived around it.

This perspective has led Ilori to consider an idea he calls transgenerational joy. Conversations about inherited trauma are important, he suggests, but there is also value in recognizing the practices, gestures and forms of care passed through families and communities.

“We spend a lot of time talking about transgenerational trauma, but what about transgenerational joy,” he said.

He explored the concept in a TED Talk in August, and it also informed “Joy Through Resistance,” his first solo gallery exhibition at Cristea Roberts Gallery in London. Ilori has said that his mother gave him many such seeds of joy, gifts whose effects now extend beyond his own family through the people who encounter his work.

That more nuanced view of happiness is increasingly visible in his practice. Joy is no longer simply brightness or the opposite of sadness; it can be a way of carrying memory, recognizing loss and remaining open to connection. The shift gives his work additional emotional depth without abandoning the generous visual spirit that made it recognizable.

Ilori continues to move easily between art, design and commercial collaborations. In 2026, his projects have included work with Rapha, Veuve Clicquot, Bloomingdales, Dunelm, Absolut Vodka, Starbucks and the Portland Art Museum. He has embraced such partnerships as opportunities to bring new ideas to broader audiences, rather than treating commerce and creativity as opposing worlds.

With Chairman, Ilori offers a record of the first decade of a distinctive furniture practice while opening a wider conversation about what objects can hold. The chairs are colorful and immediate, but they also make room for migration, family, mourning and endurance. In that combination lies a fuller definition of joy—one that does not deny grief, but learns to live alongside it.