Femi Themen is a British-Surinamese artist, raised in Coventry and based in London. Holding a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art (with an exchange at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), her work has been awarded the Audrey Wykeham Prize (2026), The Herbert Seaborn Memorial Scholarship (2025), and The James Lewis Foundation Scholarship (2021–26), and exhibited in London and Chicago.
Primarily working with sculpture and sound, Themen treats her practice as a site of reflection and inquiry into interpersonal and collective interiorities, wrangling with grief, challenges to agency, gendered shame, and the desire for intimacy and respite. Through labor-intensive material processes and found objects, her work records her relationship with the handling and fallout of ‘difficult’ feelings, experiences, and conversations.
Drawing from Caribbean domestic vernaculars, Afro-Surinamese artisanship, and the socio-political and social foundations of Jazz and Blues, she employs modes of craftsmanship, rhythm, and voices tied to her multicultural heritage. She proposes antiphony (call-and-response) and improvisation as messy, generous sites for conversation, where individual and collective voices blur in non-hierarchical ways, and unfinished forms of social intimacy are born.
Themen applies this antiphonical approach to sculpture by echoing textural motifs, symbols, and processes across her work. She explores the circle, a Winti symbol for "no beginning, no end," as an opening or point of access that can invite closeness or be obscured. Experimenting with Winti practices, she applies pimba clay (a ceremonial clay for healing and convening with spirits) and paint to suggest touch and wear, ensuring the relationship between artist, viewer, and work remains present. Playing with these languages of visibility and interconnectivity, she creates opportunities for discovery, troubles ideas of access, privacy, and individualism, and grounds herself and her community within the work.