Layiwola has built on the artistic tradition of her mother, Princess Elizabeth Olowu, the first female bronze caster in Nigeria,[8] a status she achieved through resilience in a culture that is very patriarchal.
Layiwola started her primary education at Emotan preparatory school, had a length of time at St Maria Goretti College and graduated.
[11] Layiwola, who initially began working with metal, now explores a broad range of media that engage with history, memory and cultural expropriation.
Much of her work emphasizes themes such as the colonization of sacred assets from the Benin kingdom and asserting her place in the male dominated field of bronze casting.
[12] In her most ambitious solo exhibition, Benin1897.com:Art and the Restitution Question (2010), Layiwola's return to the punitive expedition to Benin in 1897 and the looting of prized cultural artifacts from the bedchamber of her forebears brings together her personal and communal history.
[14] Layiwola currently hosts workshops on a traditional form of tie dye called adire, which involves dying cotton cloth an indigo color using a starch resist made of cassava flour.
[15] Layiwola would go on to launch a solo exhibition titled "Indigo reimagined" in 2019, that highlights different types of traditional Yoruba and Edo crafts such as poetry, metalwork and various dyed textiles.