At the London Design Biennale, Myles Igwebuike Offers a Medium to Rethink African Design

For his first time curating the Nigerian Pavilion at the London Design Biennale, which takes place from June 5 to 29, Igwebuike brings his rigorous practice to one of the world's most respected design events. This marks Nigeria’s first government-endorsed participation in the Biennale, despite having taken part in previous years, specifically 2023 and 2024. The pavilion is titled Hopes and Impediments, a theme inspired by Chinua Achebe's deeply astute essays, which unpack the nature of identity "not just as an individual construct but as a collective negotiation shaped by memory, shifting histories, and communal experiences," according to Igwebuike's official curatorial statement.

Hopes and Impediments is also a direct response to the biennale's overarching theme of Surface Reflections, ideated by this year's Artistic Director, Dr Samuel Ross MBE, which seeks to interrogate the external and internal influences that fuel design ideas.

At the Nigerian Pavilion, produced by Culture Lab Africa, Igwebuike has curated and designed a space that, as he puts it, "reclaims indigenous technologies as legitimate epistemological tools, capable of informing contemporary discourse on design, history, and identity." The pavilion presents a striking yet straightforward proposition: that Africa's future in design can and should be found in the intelligence of the past.

"There will be a lot of co-creation with collaborators like Adesua Aighewi, Allegra Aida, Bunmi Agusto, and Khadijah Dikko," Igwebuike tells OkayAfrica. "The entire group of culture collaborators is female. And it's really interesting to have that aspect more pronounced in the pavilion. So I'm very excited to see how people interact with that."

Also present at the core of this pavilion is one question. "What does it look like to interrogate a history that may not be rosy?" Igwebuike asks. In answering that question, Igwebuike has created an intensive and audacious work that aligns with the design work he has been doing for years. True to his process, the work behind the pavilion began with months of copious research. Igwebuike returned to Lejja, a community 14 kilometers from Nsukka in eastern Nigeria, to make sense of what remains of the important archaeological site and what the people who live there remember.

"Research is not only about going to a library and looking at archives. Research is also sitting down with the Igwe of Lejja and him telling me the story of Lejja from his eyes, and then sitting down with a 10-year-old who's playing football across the village square, who also tells me about Lejja."

The Center for Memories (CFM) Enugu - an archive and history institute was a helpful partner during this process. "Myles' work stood out because it isn't just artistic, it's interrogation and future-facing," the CFM writes in a statement to OkayAfrica. "He treats memory as living, layered, and political, which speaks directly to CFM's mission to preserve and animate Igbo histories. What resonated with us was his commitment to using heritage data not as static information but as material for creating new opportunities in the South East. His practice of retranslating research, taking what's often confined to academic or institutional contexts and rendering it accessible, spatial, and emotionally legible, made him not just a collaborator, but a kindred thinker."

Nigeria's outing at this year's London Design Biennale coincides with the recent emergence of Nigerian artists and art institutions breaking new ground on the international art scene. Last year, writer and curatorAindrea Emelife curated Nigeria's second-ever pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. In 2023, renowned architect Tosin Oshinowo was appointed curator of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial. Most recently, Nigeria's film industry has made great strides with the first Nigerian film to be officially selected by the Cannes Film Festival, along with the launch of the Screen Nigeria platform, which is designed to foster collaboration and promote Nigerian films at festivals like Cannes. With Igwebuike's latest appointment, Nigeria is expanding the reach of its artistic footprint, exporting artistic talent beyond the already widely successful Afrobeats movement.

Igwebuike, who studied design at the Royal College of Art, says he is aware of the weight of this moment and the dialogues it could open around ancient forms of civilization and how the past can inform the present. "I am extremely optimistic. I'm hopeful," he says. "This has not just been about the pavilion, but my life's work around using anthropology to explore modernity and recontextualizing and translating heritage data."

At the Pavilion, Igwebuike hopes that attendees will leave with a deep sense of renewal to embrace their heritage. "I explore 'what if we give ourselves what we're looking for rather than waiting for the other to return,'" he says. "It looks at psychological ownership as a catalyst for confidence, not necessarily in our day-to-day but more in the arts and of our histories in our identity. I want people to go through this pavilion, Nigerian and non-Nigerians alike, and feel that they can psychologically and distinctly own their kind of identity and heritage."

As someone whose work is guided by anthropological materials, Igwebuike hopes that this pavilion opens up conversations and opportunities around how "anthropology can be an agent for world-building."

Having various identities, born to a royal family, raised in America before moving to live with his grandparents in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria, and trained as a designer across the world, he has always been guided by a need to make sense of his constant culture shock.

"From a very young age, I've always been an investigator," Igwebuike, who switched from pursuing economics to art, says. "I've always had this kind of curiosity and questioning. But I think when I finally took a chance on myself in getting the formal training around design, especially from an astute institution like the Royal College, that did help me articulate my practice."