Who is Mirjam Yeboah?

I am Mirjam Yeboah (she/they), a queer, Fennoswedish-Ghanaian costume designer, textile artist and educator based in Helsinki. I grew up in a creative family in Kirkkonummi and graduated with a BA in Fashion Design and Global Education from the University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, in 2016. I have since worked in various projects in fashion, costume and multidisciplinary art fields.

In 2021 I started my own lingerie brand, Tekelepekele, which runs alongside my artistic career. My current costuming projects include a medieval inspired dace piece, a children’s play tackling difficult emotions and a contemporary performance piece at Teater Viirus. In 2023 i designed costumes for a theatre piece at Svenska teatern in Helsinki. The year before, I made costumes for YLE UMK and the artist Lxandra, whom is one of my returning customers. I’m also continuously working with the installation “Don’t Thank For the Food”, displayed at festivals Hangö teaterträff and Moving in November.

My art practice conveys a strong vision and I currently focus on textile based installations and soft sculptures. My work is rooted in the complexities of hybridity, belonging, and transformation. I explore liminal spaces—thresholds between identities, experiences, and states of being. I decolonize the body and relish in mysticism.

The body, as I see it, is both a vessel for magic and a site of physicality: sensual, mutable, political. Through the softness of textiles, I shape forms that are familiar yet strange, inviting viewers into a space of recognition, comfort, and quiet questioning. My sculptures are not direct representations, but embodied suggestions—fragments of memory, gesture, and emotion.

Craft is central to my practice. I value technical exploration and resist creative stagnation, constantly experimenting with materials and methods. This dedication to making—slow, deliberate, and tactile—is a form of resistance in itself. In a world that often seeks to categorize, flatten, or erase, I build spaces that hold multiplicity.

I want my audience to feel something that resonates in their own body. A sense of home. A reminder that softness is powerful. That care is radical. That the structures we inhabit can be reimagined—stitched, stretched, or unraveled entirely.