Willow has produced a work an exhibition on the work of Mae-ling Lokko at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture in Belgium that explores distinct historical sites reconstituted materially as the result of generative justice systems.

Curated by Tim Roerig, Heleen Van Loon and Silvia Franceschini, Grounds for Return examines the notion of sites and spaces of extraction – notably the West African coastal landscape, the farm, the tunnel and the dining table – reconstituted materially as the result of generative justice systems. The exhibition includes works produced in collaboration with artist Nana Afua Pierre Haynes and chef Selassie Atadika.

The idea of 'return' in the context of the work is primarily defined not as an act of human mobility, but rather as a concept through the physical and psychological reconnection of both human and non-human processes that patiently cycle and return value to their generational mechanisms.

The work opens with the supplanting of an iconic West African architectural threshold that has remained a powerfully haunting space of continued departure of human bodies from their homeland. Here damp stone bricks of the slave castles are replaced by a large-scale wall made of sinuous textured coconut wall panels, transformed from husk detritus of a voracious global commodity market keen to extract fruit and not its hardened skin.

This project has been longlisted in the installation design category of Dezeen Awards 2022.

Designer: Willow

Project: Grounds for Return