LAKWENA : HOMEPLACE

3 Dec 2020-28 Feb 2021

Overview

Lakwena Maciver, one of the UK’s most exciting contemporary black artists, creates painted prayers and meditations, which respond to and re-appropriate elements of popular culture. Central to her practice are words, used both as images and as anchors of meaning. Exploring the role of the artist as myth-maker, her paintings act as a means of decolonisation, subtly subverting prevailing mythologies. The approach is instinctive and autodidactic, producing visceral, rhythmic and immersive panel paintings, iconic murals and installations. Lakwena’s most recent body of work, exhibited for the first time at Hastings Contemporary, focuses on the interplay between her practices as both artist and mother of two young sons. Responding to feminist author bell hooks’ essay Homeplace (a site of resistance), and in the tradition of African women across the diaspora, Lakwena has been painting the walls of her home to create a space of affirmation, empowerment and resistance upon which will sit her panel paintings.