Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by London-based artist Lakwena Maciver entitled, I'M IN YOUR HANDS, opening in Paris on January 25, 2025.
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 honor the intergenerational legacy of African diasporic customs, whilst also making spiritual allusions with universal resonance.
Central to the exhibition is a collection of hand-cut portraits entitled I KNOW I CAN COUNT ON YOU and LIFT YOUR HEAD HIGH. These composite silhouettes merge the features of barbershop clientele, as a symbol of collective identity. Their exposed wood grain reveals the figures’ interiority; an embodiment of vulnerability that facilitates the intergenerational transmission of identity, where the past and present converge and evolve through shared experiences.
“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 nexus where futurism and timeless traditions can converse and converge.
The exhibition explores masculinity through Maciver’s unique perspective, shaped by both her intimacy with and distance from barbershop culture. As Maciver moves between proximity and distance, her perspective is shaped by both intimacy and estrangement from barbershop culture. As a woman, she reframes these spaces as arenas where masculinity is both performed and undone, revealing gestures of vulnerability and transformation often obscured by societal conditioning.
A threshold between time and tradition, I'M IN YOUR HANDS activates the architecture of our Parisian gallery to embody the rhythms and resonances of a collective narrative.