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Lot Essay
I’m really happy to have my work included in this auction in support of MOWAA. The museum is of special significance for me as my husband’s family are from Benin City, so the establishment of such a significant art institution in that part of Africa is very near to my heart, and it’s an honour to be able to contribute to part of its story.’
– LAKWENA MACIVER
Christie’s and the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Nigeria are collaborating to raise funds for MOWAA and its initiatives to create a cultural ecosystem in Benin City, based on the art of the past, present and future. A number of artists have generously agreed to donate original works of art to the auction, including Yinka Shonibare, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Lakwena Maciver and Victor Ehikhamenor. Proceeds from the sale of the works will go towards MOWAA initiatives including the presentation of the Nigeria Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, 2024—commissioned by the Governor of Edo State and also curated by Aindrea Emelife—and the 20-acre Creative Campus, including the Rainforest Gallery. Designed by the Dakar-based architecture firm Worofila, the Rainforest Gallery will be dedicated to showcasing Modern and Contemporary art, as well as historic exhibitions.
London-based Lakwena Maciver is known for her technicolour murals. Often drawing on aspects of her mixed Ugandan and British heritage, she creates works which employ a vivid, graphic visual language to reflect on our social values and beliefs. She uses kaleidoscopic colour, bold pattern and adornment to explore what and who we decorate as a society.
At the same time, there is a joyful quality to her works: their energetic palettes and dynamic, tessellated shapes counter any cynical implications. Maciver includes culturally and politically pertinent narratives within her work. She creates painted prayers and meditations which act as a means of decolonisation, subtly subverting prevailing mythologies. The present work contains the titular word on a blown-up scale, amidst a busy pattern and fluorescent colour in Maciver’s signature style.
The work’s central text performs like a subtitle, as if imploring us to laugh. It also references the concealed ditches called ‘ha-has’ which were created to stop livestock straying into gardens in the 18th and 19th centuries, in tandem with the Enclosure Acts which divided up British land into areas of private ownership. The painting relates to her major 2022 exhibition A green and pleasant land (HA- HA) at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which used the ha-ha as a metaphor for the narrowing of public discourse. Behind the work’s celebratory tone and laughter, Lakwena is interrogating the illusion of openness and diversity. The work takes on an ironic quality which appeals to the viewer’s humour, as well as the more sober reality behind most jokes. Lakwena’s oeuvre cleverly explores how the role of the artist as mythmaker translates into contemporary popular culture.
Maciver’s installations have been featured in an array of locations worldwide, from London’s Tate Britain, Somerset House, and the Southbank Centre to a juvenile detention center in Arkansas, a monastery in Vienna, and the Bowery Wall in New York City. Her work continues to strike attention across walls, floors, and monuments, for its acid-bright colours, lyrical text and unorthodox locations.
– LAKWENA MACIVER
Christie’s and the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Nigeria are collaborating to raise funds for MOWAA and its initiatives to create a cultural ecosystem in Benin City, based on the art of the past, present and future. A number of artists have generously agreed to donate original works of art to the auction, including Yinka Shonibare, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Lakwena Maciver and Victor Ehikhamenor. Proceeds from the sale of the works will go towards MOWAA initiatives including the presentation of the Nigeria Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, 2024—commissioned by the Governor of Edo State and also curated by Aindrea Emelife—and the 20-acre Creative Campus, including the Rainforest Gallery. Designed by the Dakar-based architecture firm Worofila, the Rainforest Gallery will be dedicated to showcasing Modern and Contemporary art, as well as historic exhibitions.
London-based Lakwena Maciver is known for her technicolour murals. Often drawing on aspects of her mixed Ugandan and British heritage, she creates works which employ a vivid, graphic visual language to reflect on our social values and beliefs. She uses kaleidoscopic colour, bold pattern and adornment to explore what and who we decorate as a society.
At the same time, there is a joyful quality to her works: their energetic palettes and dynamic, tessellated shapes counter any cynical implications. Maciver includes culturally and politically pertinent narratives within her work. She creates painted prayers and meditations which act as a means of decolonisation, subtly subverting prevailing mythologies. The present work contains the titular word on a blown-up scale, amidst a busy pattern and fluorescent colour in Maciver’s signature style.
The work’s central text performs like a subtitle, as if imploring us to laugh. It also references the concealed ditches called ‘ha-has’ which were created to stop livestock straying into gardens in the 18th and 19th centuries, in tandem with the Enclosure Acts which divided up British land into areas of private ownership. The painting relates to her major 2022 exhibition A green and pleasant land (HA- HA) at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which used the ha-ha as a metaphor for the narrowing of public discourse. Behind the work’s celebratory tone and laughter, Lakwena is interrogating the illusion of openness and diversity. The work takes on an ironic quality which appeals to the viewer’s humour, as well as the more sober reality behind most jokes. Lakwena’s oeuvre cleverly explores how the role of the artist as mythmaker translates into contemporary popular culture.
Maciver’s installations have been featured in an array of locations worldwide, from London’s Tate Britain, Somerset House, and the Southbank Centre to a juvenile detention center in Arkansas, a monastery in Vienna, and the Bowery Wall in New York City. Her work continues to strike attention across walls, floors, and monuments, for its acid-bright colours, lyrical text and unorthodox locations.