Opening : Friday January 24, 6-8PM
Inspired by the vibrancy of African diasporic barbershops —spaces that extend beyond businesses and serve as theatres of both safety and ambition, solidarity and personal transformation, the exhibition is an exploration and celebration of masculinity through a female gaze.
Maciver’s work combines typographic and figurative elements reminiscent of local vernacular advertisements that commonly adorn shop windows and walls in order to create a space of imagining, referencing the familiar aesthetics of these barbershops through a futurist lens. These hand-painted motifs interpolate local aesthetic traditions to honour the intergenerational legacy of African diasporic customs, whilst also making spiritual allusions with universal resonance.
“I always start with words,” states Maciver, whose practice interrogates the historical and cultural dimensions of language, expressed in phrases that are presented here in graphic and sculptural arrangements. In her work, texts, hues, and forms collide to enshrine the barbershop as a landmark for both critical engagement and joyful exchange—a setting nexus where futurism and timeless traditions can converse and converge.
A portal between past and present, I'M IN YOUR HANDS will activate our Parisian space, engaging both its architecture and audience.