Zak Ové: I think it has always been something spiritual-self. When you wear the mask, you become your other self. It transforms you, and you become the figure within the mask. It’s a way of leaving your present self to become your spiritual self.

ZO: Yes. Spiritual transformation.

ZO: These figures—forty nude African men with their hands raised—stand in a posture of African nobility. I originally created them for a historical context in London, at Somerset House, for participation in the 1‑54 Contemporary African Art Fair (editor’s note: in 2016).
In researching the history of the building, I discovered that Somerset House had been the palace of King James I in the early 1600s. In 1605, his wife, Queen Anne of Denmark, organized a masquerade ball, spending nearly half the cost of the building on the preparations. She and nine English princesses portrayed deities from the Niger Delta in Africa, in a script written by Ben Jonson, one of Britain’s most formidable playwrights. Macbeth had been written just five years earlier. In Jonson’s play, these princesses were to come to Britain and “bathe in the sea of whiteness” to proclaim their true beauty—this marked the first use of blackface.
King James also rewrote the Bible to suit his own lifestyle at the time and went on to persist with the slave trade. I was interested in how my forty male nude figures, cast in graphite, might respond to and provoke conversation around this historical narrative, which unfolded over 400 years ago.
I chose graphite because it felt like a progression from ebony wood, the traditional material for carving African statues.
I also see these figures in relation to diaspora. My father had given me a small African figure in 1972, similar to these, and I decided to enlarge it and multiply it by forty. In many ways, this reflects the diaspora: one person arrives, has children, those children have children, and so on. Yet, while they appear African, there is also differentiation—they are born in Europe, experiencing the injustices of colonial societies and often disconnected from their history or roots in Africa. Graphite, for me, emphasizes this separation.

ZO: Not necessarily. For instance, when I grew up in the 1970s, many of us had parents from the Caribbean who loved to share stories of tropical landscapes—beaches, palm trees, jungles. Yet, we experienced childhood very differently, growing up in Britain.
We knew office blocks, we knew London. And often, on many occasions, we were told to “go back to where you came from,” even though we were black British kids. I wanted to create a work that reflected these injustices, this dilemma, and what that feels like.

ZO: Absolutely right.

ZO: What I mean is that, growing up, for example on trips to the British Museum as a child, we were taught that African carvings and spiritual figures came from the past—cultures considered almost extinct. I find it fascinating how new-world materials can revive and contemporize these traditions.
We were taught to move hand in hand with the West’s ideal of modernity. The white Western future was shaped by colonial empires such as Britain. For me, it was important to explore how the ideas of The Mothership and these Invisible Men help us imagine our own futures, the horizons of tomorrow, when we are included. The mothership, standing here alongside the figures, also functions as a set of architectural building blocks. Traveling through Britain and the U.S., particularly recently in Washington, D.C., I realized that the city’s grand skylines were built by black hands—slaves and indentured laborers—who remain invisible in the telling of history.
I wanted to create a work that spoke to their inclusion, and to envision what future horizons might look like when shaped by our own aesthetic perspectives.
The centerpiece of this work (editor's note: referring to the Mothership Connection installation) is a Mende helmet mask, traditionally worn by women in rituals of healing. It is one of the few African helmet masks made for women, and I felt it was important to cast this object as a maternal figure, ancestrally connected to the people of the culture it belongs to.

ZO: Oh yes, primitivism is the right word.
But today we understand that these cultures are not primitive at all. When you actually look closely at what these ceremonies are for—the rituals and cultural meanings behind masquerades—you realize they are quite the opposite of primitive. They were labeled that way by colonial societies that had enslaved the people of Africa.
What we have tried to do over the past few decades is to revisit and reanalyze that history, to understand it with greater depth and complexity. And also to recognize its importance—not in relation to the European Western canon, but to the people of Africa and its diaspora, so that we too can be included in shaping our own aesthetics.

ZO: It has taken a long time. Yeah, but for hundreds of years prior, this didn't happen. I’m 59 years of age, and in my childhood this didn’t exist.
There were African artists, and there were artists from the Caribbean, but we were never included in the canon of museums, and art fairs in the way that we are today. I’m a second generation artist. My father was Britain’s first black filmmaker (editor’s note: Horace Ové is one of the first and most influential Black filmmakers in British cinema).
He made the first black British feature film, and spent a lifetime, really in analysis of invisible histories. I’ve tried to take that batten and extend it into my own practice with sculpture and art making. And I’m very proud to see now that young children of Africa’s diaspora, African Americas, people from the Carribean, can take their own children to museums, and feel a sense of inclusion, where they once weren't heading.
When I began my practice, we were told that people of color didn’t come to the museums. And I felt very strongly, that was because there was no inclusion of their own histories or their own culture.

ZO: The whole world is changing now.
And it’s very important that multiculturalism respects cultures that were once neglected. Art and art history are very important ways to teach people about histories that they were denied.
To be brought here as a slave and not know your ancestry, or your father’s fathers, or your mother’s mothers, creates a disconnect from who you are today and from the cultures you were violently separated from. I think this kind of analysis through the arts is deeply important for the children of today and tomorrow. It helps them understand who they are, where they come from, and how they might unite within a multicultural society while still feeling a sense of self.

ZO: Yes.

ZO: This figure behind you is imbued with bright colors. It’s victorious. It’s celebratory. It celebrates a culture. These figures are noble, proud, and open. I want people to be able to enjoy this sense of revelation and celebration. To me, the idea of celebration is also very victorious.
When we celebrate ourselves, perhaps we don’t have to enter into conflict. In Trinidad, it’s very much about that. It was one of the ways we found our independence—by showing the colonizers.
Look, we can be anything, with pride and with joy!