Ancestral
futures
Commissioned by the British Council and Caerbladon as part of the New Narratives programme.
Ancestral Futures is a four-part painting series exploring identity, erasure, and survival - told through the life of one boy who grows into a man as his environment fades around him.
This series was created as part of New Narratives - a five-year British Council programme connecting young artists and storytellers across the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa. The goal was to challenge outdated perceptions and build new, authentic connections between both regions.
My brief was to respond to the theme of connection - but I wasn’t interested in the typical surface-level, heritage-exchange approach. I wanted to speak on something more urgent. Because connection isn’t just about shared values - it’s also about what’s being taken.
The story is simple: one person’s life, told through four scenes. But as he grows older, the water in each painting recedes - symbolising the land, culture, and ecosystem being stripped away in the name of development.
This isn’t just about history - it’s a warning. Because if we let the people who live in balance with nature disappear, we lose the map forward.
Role:
Lead Artist, Art Director
Partners:
British Council, Caerbladdon
Award (s):
New Narratives Award (2021)
Inspired by the Khoisan (commonly known as “San”) tribes of Southern Africa - some of the oldest surviving cultures in the world, now slowly disappearing.
MOTHERLAND
A woman and her infant son rest by a full body of water. The atmosphere is unguarded - no spectacle, no performance - simply a moment of intimacy anchored in land, lineage, and quiet abundance.
The mother is more than a caregiver. She is presence, protection, and place. Her posture and surroundings speak to a time before scarcity - when memory was passed on through proximity, not preservation.
Here, HAM introduces the central motif of the series: water as a stand-in for belonging. Its fullness marks a world still intact.
PASSAGE
Three adolescent boys walk across a drying terrain. The water, once central, is now a fading backdrop. This stage - loosely inspired by Southern African rites of passage - marks a shift in both age and environment.
The composition is intentionally spare. The figures are not dramatised. Instead, they are moving with quiet conviction - not toward adulthood, but into a reality where the conditions of their upbringing no longer apply.
The surrounding land, once lush, now carries tension. What was once held is now slipping.
GUARDIAN
The same trio, now men, are positioned around a hornless rhino - its mutilation made uncanny by the surreal glow of artificial horns. The natural has been replaced, yet the violence remains visible.
There is no triumph here - only vigilance. The guardians do not appear empowered. They appear necessary.
This work holds a dual urgency. On one level, it references ecological loss and the brutality of poaching. On another, it challenges the viewer to consider the exhaustion of protecting a world that no longer protects its people.
DUNE
An elder figure sits alone atop a sand dune in the Namib Desert. The water is gone. The land is dry, silent, and indifferent. And yet, there is still dignity.
This final work is not an end - but a distillation. The figure, once a child surrounded by water, now becomes one with the arid landscape. There is no mourning here - only stillness, and the unspoken knowledge that survival has its own form of grace.
DUNE invites reflection on what remains when all else is taken - and whether that residue is enough to begin again.
DUNE
(Painting Timelapse)
Background
The New Narratives project is about opening up a future facing dialogue between young creatives and representative organisations in Africa and the UK to build stronger cultural connections between those living in the four UK nations and on the African continent. The project is looking for fresh perspectives, new insights based on lived experience and which challenge dominant narratives about Africa and the UK, including those relating to the UK’s colonial past and oversimplistic and negative representations of Africa and its diverse peoples and cultures.
You can read more about it by clicking the article button below: