UZO NJOKU X FRANK HORN LONDON

COLLABORATION: I reached out to my long time friend who handcrafts leather goods in his East London Studio and is the founder of Frank Horn London. I met him when I was studying abroad for a few months at the University of Arts London. It was a new experience learning about what it takes to bring a bag to life and we picked each others brains.

I wanted to imprint my art on a luxury item as a refreshing way of getting a message out to the public. I created a bold and captivating pattern which was spun off my Ghana Must Go 2019 piece. The purse pattern is adapted from a plaid pattern tote bag that is used worldwide with various names associating it with migrants. In West Africa, it is called “Ghana Must Go”, in Germany it is called the “Tuekenkoffer”, in the USA, the “Chinatown tote”, in Guyana, the “Guyanese Samsonite”, and in various other places, the “Refugee Bag”. It is the bag of resilient people looking for a better life and as a migrant I wanted to capture that in a unique way.