My London is home away from home, exciting, full of culture and possibilities. I was born in Lagos, Nigeria and came to London at the age of 6 and have since then called London home. I’m still very much a Nigerian first and foremost and with a dual nationality passport, I have the luxury of having the best of both worlds. As an artist, this is what I try to evoke in my pieces. Being African and British gives me a beautiful perspective on life, having a rich cultural background full of colour, texture, vibrancy and tradition to pull inspiration from, allows me the opportunity to explore life in a very different way, in a way that your average Londoner wouldn’t get.
What makes London so special and inspires the work I produce is the mix of culture here in the city. The diverse mix of culture can be seen in the array of restaurants we have, the music we listen to and the languages that are spoken to just queuing up in your local supermarket. With all its issues, London is a welcome city and there’s nowhere else outside my home country of Nigeria I would rather call home.
This of course doesn’t mean London doesn’t come with its challenges and 2020 was a defining time for all of us addressing race, culture and tolerance for our differences. This led to my work and personal life taking a new direction in everything I did. Overnight I became a warrior for social injustice. What kind of world did I want to live in? And as a black woman and mother of 3, what type of world did I want my children to grow up in and raise their own family in?
As black people, not only were we dealing with a pandemic like everyone else, but following the murder of George Floyd, we also had to deal with racism, discrimination and unconscious bias. The world that had closed their eyes and ears to racial injustice were all now forced to open it and see what we as black people had been dealing with all these years.
As an artist I wanted to use my work and platform to address these issues and beyond that see how I could make a difference in my community to make a change. Racism isn’t just limited to a discrimination against skin tone, but against culture, language, behaviour and thinking.
The effects of unconscious bias is felt in every aspect of one’s life, from the opportunities we are given, the medical attention we receive to the education our children get in school and so much more. Understanding people’s culture and seeing the similarities we all share was a way of changing unconscious bias which can be mistaken for and can develop into racism. I wanted to do what I could in my own small way to help educate people about my culture.
As a resident of the London borough of Camden, a very multicultural borough in the heart of London, full of a diverse mix of culture and economic status, I could see there was so much work to be done when it came to representing my culture and bringing more visibility to our presence. Just walking down my local high street Belsize Park, Hampstead, Camden Town, I could see the non-existing representation of the black culture. As a starting point, It is important that all our high street represent their diverse culture.
Young people need to see a positive representation of themselves. They need to see images and people that will inspire them to give them hope of a better life and that their dreams can be a reality. The only time we see black youth on tv was always about another knife crime, another young life taken from us. I feel that the lack of visible positive representation has a contributing factor to this.
I started the group Camden Black Creatives with 3 other talent women that lived in the borough, to address issues of discrimination and inequality for black creatives living in Camden. One year into setting up our group, which is now a registered CIC, we have managed to bring awareness to local black creatives in the borough to local residents who would have never known of their existence. We also ran a PopUp shop in Hampstead high street, the first black run PopUp promoting black artists. It was amazing to see the positive response we had to the shop, bringing colour and culture to the high street. We shared stories, personal experiences and inspiration with local residents about our culture and on so many occasions there were laughs and tears shed at the exchange of these stories. We need more spaces like this where people can come to and learn about each other. Although we live in a world where knowledge is accessible for all, it’s also very controlled and miscommunicated and this can be very dangerous.
“This is what I want my London to be about, sharing our cultures, giving open safe spaces for people to learn about each other’s lives and experiences. How else can we change the world if we don’t open ourselves to the different beautiful cultures we’re surrounded by in London. There’s still so much we can all do to make our London a better and more inclusive city and it doesn’t matter how little we can do, every little thing makes a big difference.”
