Lakwena on home and paradise
Lakwena on home and paradise
Phrases of hope and positivity articulated in bold colours and splayed across billboards and banners; the powerful and immediate visual language of London-based artist, Lakwena. Central to Lakwena’s practice is a reappropriation of the dynamics of popular and consumer culture and its prevailing mythologies, a desire to subvert the constant messaging of control and offer emancipatory energy in its place, channelling the spirit and tactics of the likes of Emory Douglas, American graphic artist and Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party and conceptual artists such as Barbara Kruger. Indeed if Barbara Kruger is the mother of creating uncanny encounters with the semiotics of capitalism and power, then Maciver is her fiercely positive counterpart, manifesting messages of hopes for a better world in response to the realities of the world around us.
The artist’s multicoloured output has cemented her place in both in London’s art scene and internationally, from installations at Tate Britain, Somerset House, Facebook and the Southbank Centre in London, to a juvenile detention centre in Arkansas, a monastery in Vienna, and the Bowery Wall in New York City.
Geist’s Nick Hackworth caught up with Lakwena to discuss the meaning of home and the longing for paradise that animate her new exhibition, How we Build a Home, presented by Vigo Gallery in the extraordinary surroundings of Wellington Arch in Hyde Park Corner.
Nick: Your latest show is called How We Build a Home. When did the idea of home begin to emerge as a theme in your work?
Lakwena: I think it’s been there for a while, even before I realised it. When I started painting these boxes I’d found in Ridley Road Market, it became clear that home had always been something I was trying to understand, maybe even solve. My brother, who’s a psychotherapist, once told me that people often have one main problem they’re trying to solve their whole lives. I don’t know if “home” is my problem exactly, but it’s definitely central to what I do.
Nick: What does “home” mean to you?
Lakwena: For me, it’s a kind of longing, a feeling of never quite arriving. I don’t think that place fully exists here on Earth. I often talk about paradise rather than heaven, as both beginning and end, a place where I imagine real home might be. For now, we’re all just trying to make the best home we can: safety, belonging, peace. Not a building, but a feeling. Your latest show is called How We Build a Home. When did the idea of home begin to emerge as a theme in your work?
Lakwena: I think it’s been there for a while, even before I realised it. When I started painting these boxes I’d found in Ridley Road Market, it became clear that home had always been something I was trying to understand, maybe even solve. My brother, who’s a psychotherapist, once told me that people often have one main problem they’re trying to solve their whole lives. I don’t know if “home” is my problem exactly, but it’s definitely central to what I do.
Nick: What does “home” mean to you?
Lakwena: For me, it’s a kind of longing, a feeling of never quite arriving. I don’t think that place fully exists here on Earth. I often talk about paradise rather than heaven, as both beginning and end, a place where I imagine real home might be. For now, we’re all just trying to make the best home we can: safety, belonging, peace. Not a building, but a feeling.
Nick: The boxes in your new paintings come from Ridley Road Market. How do they connect to that idea of home?
Lakwena: The boxes carry food from all over the world, bananas from Uganda, mangoes from South America. I’m drawn to the African ones because half my heritage is Ugandan. They literally carry food from “home.” It’s simple but powerful. I don’t have to embellish it, the meanings are already there.
Nick: You’ve talked about trade routes and how they link to home.
Lakwena: Yes, the routes that brought these foods here were built because of colonial histories and diasporic connections. The fact that there are enough Ugandans in Britain to sustain a trade route of Ugandan bananas, that says something. My dad came here because of that colonial link; it’s part of why I exist. I like looking at that without judgment, just as fact, evidence of history that connects us.
Nick: Ridley Road itself feels like a home of many homes.
Lakwena: Exactly. It’s been home to so many different communities over time. That layering of histories is something I love, it’s messy but rich.
Nick: You’ve also talked about your home as a kind of studio space. Did that begin in lockdown?
Lakwena: Yes, I painted my flat during lockdown. I’d get bored with blank walls, so I painted over them, added words, colour. It felt like opening a portal, really, making my surroundings speak back to me.
Nick: What kinds of words did you paint?
Lakwena: “You’ve been so good to me,” which I painted when I was pregnant with my first son. “Nothing can separate us,” “Your love has lifted me higher.” Those kinds of affirmations. I think about what’s being spoken over us in the spaces we live in, how words can bless or curse.
Nick: That’s a strong idea, being “spoken over.”
Lakwena: Yes, I mean how people grow up hearing certain things: if you’re told you’re stupid or ugly, you internalise that. It’s like a curse. But you can also speak good, over people and remind them that they’re loved, capable and beautiful. That’s what I try to do with my paintings. They’re like visual songs of blessing.
Nick: That links to the way you work in public spaces. Was that always important to you?
Lakwena: Yes. My first mural was in Brazil, in a church that used to be a shop. I’ve always been interested in public speech, how words and images shape consciousness. I studied graphic design and wrote my dissertation on “Wall and Response”, the artist as mythmaker. I looked at Emory Douglas from the Black Panthers, and early graffiti in New York.
Nick: So your work comes out of that lineage, visual activism and public communication.
Lakwena: Exactly. Growing up, I felt invisible. There were no Black faces in fashion magazines, no one who looked like me. So making work in public was my way of claiming space, interrupting that silence. I wanted to put out images that spoke directly to people, outside the gallery system.
Nick: Has that feeling changed for you over time?
Lakwena: Definitely. I felt small growing up, but now I feel more rooted. The world’s changed too, representation isn’t what it used to be. But the commercial landscape, the hyper-consumerism, that’s still there.
Nick: And now the “public” space has shifted online.
Lakwena: Completely. When I started, the messages were on billboards and TV. Now they’re on our phones, constant, intimate. I’m still figuring out how that affects everything. It’s strange because our homes are more porous now; the phone brings everything inside.
Nick: So the home is no longer a sanctuary?
Lakwena: Yes, it’s invaded. But I also think we still need the physical — we have bodies. We crave presence, touch, being in the same room. My work is partly about holding onto that.
Nick: Do you think that’s why the idea of home feels so urgent now?
Lakwena: Yes. We’re more connected digitally but less connected emotionally. I think people are longing for belonging again. For me, that’s why I’m interested in building community through my practice, workshops, collaborations, just bringing people together. My work can be solitary, but I want it to be a gathering place, a kind of home.