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.
