This week’s cool kid is an all-round artist perfecting his craft
A creative unbound by the divisions within art, Addai-yaw ‘Yaw Majesty’ Coker is an all-round creative with an entrepreneurial touch.
Dabbling in fashion and fine, digital and street art, Coker has his own clothing label, has designed clothes for rapper, Frank Casino, and is currently in talks with Nasty C’s stylist.
“I couldn’t tell you that I love fine art more than I love street art, more than I love fashion, more than I love music. To me they’re all so important to me in the way I go about my life,” Coker said.
The third-year BA student also runs the company, The Millennial Gen, which he founded in 2015 and now has a show on Cliff Central.
“[The Millennial Gen] is about up and coming creative of any and all forms. We’ve got a production company as well, and marketing. We try find young talent and we try also to promote young people, and give them jobs, give them an opportunity,” Coker said.
At the tender age of 21, Coker is using his current focus on fine arts to shine a light on issues facing the youth, under the theme, ‘Youth At War’ which abbreviates as his nickname, ‘Yaw’.
“For the past year and a half I’ve been working on YAW. I’ve broken it down into a few themes. It aims to discuss and shine light to the problems that the youth go through in terms of mental health awareness, the general struggle, students that are going to school right now and not being able to go to a place where they can sleep and having to sleep in a library or a bathroom,” Coker said.
Coker says that just like his creativity, he wants his art to be all-inclusive, for people to see themselves in it.
“Change can only come with awareness, and that is the main step at the moment. Just to get people questioning what’s going on around them because I feel like not enough people are doing that in this day and age,” Coker said.
Having worked with local clothing brands Gold Street and WÖlv as a designer and as a senior artist for Dolce&Gabbana during a six months residency, Coker has been preparing to launch his own clothing label, YAW in April this year.