Ilẹ̀ Lab is an indigenous lab based in Lagos and Ibadan, Nigeria focused on collective trauma healing, creativity and education through indigenous design and material culture.
We believe African indigenous sovereignty and global indigenous coalition building are paramount to global change and liberation.
Statement from the Director:
Ilẹ̀ is a collective research space, studio, and platform born out of grief+frustration +the courageous willingness to re-learn the aforementioned as beautiful +generative emotions.This work has been stewarded through ancestral guidance, remembrance +deep work undoing internalised antiblackness, anti-africanness,+colonialism. The lab is a culmination of my many years as an academic scholar, doctoral student, critical maker, decolonial designer, neuroplasticity learner, somatic self-healer, +reclaimer of ancestral gifts. I grew weary of the shallow representations of decolonial possibility made by designers, galleries, and arts foundations in Lagos, Nigeria where I live and work and have centered my research for almost a decade. The current design and art spaces within Lagos do not at all uphold the true ethos of indigeneity or collective healing +once the woke washing era is over they will move on. But I will not.
Thank you!