Zak Ové

Zak Ové is a British visual artist who works across sculpture, film and photography, living in London and Trinidad. His work is filtered through his own personal and cultural upbringing, with a black Trinidadian father and white Irish mother.

I was born into an artistic family and brought up in an extended artistic family. Many practitioners of the Windrush generation became parental to me.

He has exhibited widely in Europe, the United States and Africa, participating in international museum shows in London, Dakar, Paris, Dubai, Prague, Berlin, Johannesburg, Bamako and New York City.

We should have more shows about Black creativity in the UK, exploring the dialogue between Black artists and how they are communicating the Black experience. There have been some exhibitions on Black creativity before, but often they aren’t given such a big platform or even if they are, it’s cyclic, a programming trend that’s then forgotten again for another decade. For instance, I remember in 2005, there was Kerry James Marshall at the Camden Arts Centre, Back to Black at the Whitechapel and Africa Remix at Hayward Gallery. All fantastic shows but then there was no follow up straight afterwards. I would advocate that it needs to be more consistent.

It is undoubtedly Black British creatives who have led the charge in inspiring society to embrace our music, our language, our fashion, our art. I’m a passionate believer in radical integration and it’s through culture that we become more harmonious and multicultural as a collective British people, now and in the future.

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