Author: Luisa Nannipieri
The Nigerian designer is one of the rising stars of his generation. His Ayo Bench got international attention and was included in the Wallpaper* Class of ’24 exhibition at the Milan Triennale during last year’s Design Week. Egesi, who sees himself as a culture conservator, believes in solution design. His practice is both grounded in African cultures and focused on the present and the future of the continent. We met him in his studio at the Cité International des Arts in Paris where he just ended his residency as the first designer invited by the renowned French institution in 60 years of history.
Hi Josh, could you tell us why you think the Ayo Bench became such a success?
Josh: I honestly don’t know why. I unfortunately don’t think that it was because of the story, of the idea behind it. The creation of the Ayo Bench is centred around restitution, but I think that the reason it became popular is because it is seen as the representation of an African take on a futuristic or modern piece of design. Its looks are so minimalistic, yet they have this audacity to them, like an African piece of art. It looks simple, but still carries so much depth to it. It has a soul. This is maybe one of the reasons why it became so famous. There is also the choice of the materials, the intricate fusion of wood and acrylic that demanded a lot of engineering. At first, when I designed it for the Milan Design Week in 2022, I thought of using resin. The idea was to go to Italy and find a workshop to do it there. But the cost was too high, so I had to come up with an alternative material to work with, and I decided to build it in Nigeria.
Because I build my pieces myself, I just have this need to make some constant iterations, some adjustments to the piece. And especially for such a global design event, I needed it to look in a certain way, it needed to feel a certain way. I wasn’t going to settle for less, and that’s maybe what led to the greatness of the piece. This was my debut out of Nigeria. It needed to be impactful. And I gave everything, I poured everything into it.
That must have been a lot of pressure to deal with.
Josh: At the time I didn’t think I felt pressured. And actually, that pressure, that fire I went through, was what allowed me to bring out this particular piece, making it what it became.
Do you think you are a perfectionist?
Josh: No, I’m not. I enjoy imperfection. I enjoy nuances in design because that is what makes that particular piece its own unique self. It gives it personality. I’m also not a perfectionist because perfectionism leads you into this industrial, machine type design practice that I’m not a huge fan of. I like when design has character and can speak for itself.
You are in Paris at the moment, at the end of a three-months residence at the Cité International des Arts. You were the first designer they ever invited in 60 years of the institution history. What are you doing here?
Josh: This period has marked the genesis of a new dimension in my practice. Originally, I wanted to come here to work on the Talking Drum project, which is something I have been working on since 2023. At first it was a project I did for the Nigerian’s Goethe Institut, around the idea of an evolving culture. African musical instruments remained in their acoustic states for a very long time. Unlike with the guitar, for instance, that has evolved for acoustic to electric, we haven’t done much with our own musical instruments. As for now, people just put a microphone in front of the talking drum, but that limits the expression of the artist or the drummer. You should be able to play the talking drum and perform at the same time.
You are saying that the style western performers play on stage changed, in a certain sense, the way you play the instrument?
Josh: Yeah, it did. It has influenced the way we interact with our culture. And that is one of the things I’m trying to touch on, with my residency here. Like, how much influence am I going to allow into what I really enjoy? Because I am also becoming culture. I’m a cultural custodian in the space that I am in, but how much of foreign culture am I allowing into my practices? I don’t think it is a bad thing, per se, but I need to be conscious of this reality, unless I lose the core of my practice or of what I am trying to do.
Which is?
Josh: A designer friend of mine likes to use the word cultural conservation. It’s not about preserving the culture, because preservation means you take the culture and you put it on a shelf, where it gathers cobwebs over time. Then you start guarding it, because you don’t want it to be influenced. Which won’t allow it to evolve. But when you conserve culture, it feels then like you are dancing with it. So, let us have a good dance and create new dimensions of culture.
I would always tell people that, if our forefathers were alive right now, they most likely would be working with AI and all these technologies. They definitely would have evolved with the times, because that was what they were already doing. They weren’t referencing something their forefathers had done, they were basically just creating in the moment. They were documenting their time. They were evolving their time and evolving culture and I think that’s a better place to be than trying to guard and overly leverage history.
For you, the core of your practice is to be faithful to your culture?
Josh: Yes, to be faithful and to recognize it. When you recognize it, it stays in your core. So, naturally, everything you create comes from this point, because you’re grounded in culture, and you would naturally create what is supposed to be for this time.
But how does being in Paris today help you to do that?
Josh: Being in Paris has actually opened my mind to the possibility of building a better world than what has been left to us. After colonialism, after the slave trade era, there was a disconnection between us and our culture. And when we got back to it, we started to look at it as something spiritual, like a holy piece you have to guard forever. I think that’s one of the damages that the slave trade did to Africans. Is true that a lot of old African pieces we see today had spiritual purposes, but most of them were actually for functional uses. They were pieces of design that our ancestors created to get by their daily life, but because of the soul they carry, they are now being referred to as artifacts and reverenced. We need to change our perspective on that. Some of these pieces are ritualistic. I’m not talking about rituals as spiritual practices but as daily activities such as yoga, where you use every morning a yoga mat, for instance. So, we need to adapt that mindset to our current life. And being in Paris actually helped me realize that there’s work to be done. By my second week in Paris, I wanted to go back to Nigeria. Because I realized that there is so much work to be done back there, and I need to be at the forefront of this evolution. Coming to the West can be a trap: there have been so many people who came to the West and decided to stay because this place works. But this place works because a group of people put in the effort to make it work. And I feel like it’s my responsibility to go back and put in the work so that, in the future, people can appreciate or enjoy Nigeria the way people from all over the world are enjoying Paris.
How do you actually work? What’s your process?
Josh: My process is informed by my experiences. I won’t research into culture to try and create something new. The Ayo Bench, for instance, was a reflection on my experiences growing up as a child. We had this long bench in the compound, where everybody gathered around. Some people sit on the bench, some people sit on the floor, we watch the stars, and we share stories at night. And every time, whenever we start to leave, there was always going to be an incident where two people are left on the bench. One person stands up and the other person flips over. And I thought, okay, this is funny, but this is a problem. Let’s solve this problem of balance. My idea was to put activities on both ends of the bench, so nobody gets to sit there. I could have easily decided to put more legs on the sides, but that defied my purpose at the time. On one end of the bench there where those holes, that were originally key holders or holes for flowerpots and stuff like that, and they gave me the idea to introduce a playful element using the Ayo game. A lot of people asked me why I didn’t put the Ayo game in the centre, but besides defeating the purpose to try and strike a balance, it allows for the bench to be more modular. The backrest can be pulled out, so you can just throw your leg across and play with the person on the other side. The essence of that bench was that we all gathered and shared experiences and moments there and those activities informed the piece.
Today, there are people who got the bench and don’t play the game. They just see this piece as a beautiful piece of African design.
At the moment you are working on a new collection. You called it Ego, I think?
Josh: Yes. Ego is the Latin word meaning pride and consciousness of self. It is about wanting to preserve this identity that you’ve created around you. And it also means money in Igbo. Because, at the end of the day, I also think about how to make money from my practice. That’s another reason why I’m in Paris, to better understand how and who am I talking to and how do people sell design in Paris.
You said in an interview that it is a collection tied to your father? Why?
Josh: My dad was a very talented and creative man when he was alive. He wasn’t successful as I am right now, but he was well known by his immediate community. I remember this one time, when my dad took the village’s masquerade (a traditional Igbo costume and mask, editor’s note) to Lagos to be retouched and upgraded and he brought it back for the Christmas celebration. Which has nothing to do with Christmas, it is something we celebrate at the end of the year. Well, my dad performed the masquerade and today still people would tell you that it has been the best performance they have ever experienced. He was a wonderful drummer, a wonderful dancer and a full creative. And I feel like the Ego collection reminds me of him.
When he died, I cried and wished to take his place. I hoped to die if that could have brought him back. Then, when I was sleeping, I had this beautiful dream where we were together and if someone had watched me sleeping in that moment, they would have seen me smiling. Now, there is this symbol, this imagery of the leopard that I have started using, that in the Igbo culture it’s called the Agu and it is also present in the Benin culture. Isiagu means the head of a leopard, even if the visual representation of the Agu has been influenced by a Western misconception and it is a lion, which makes no sense because you wouldn’t find lions in my region. Well, I discovered that Agu was also a name people gave to my dad.
So, you feel like he is still at your side?
Josh: I realized that my dad had actually been present through my process, through all these things that I’ve been doing, and I never noticed. There is one of my pieces called Ikeoku, which means the strength of light, that cemented my realization that my dad could actually be working with me through my journey. I designed it, but it took me about two weeks to finally come up with a name. It took me another month to realize that when I was a kid and we used to go to the village with my dad, they would always call him Onyeikeoku, who is someone with the strength of light or strength of fire. My family are also called Ndoku, which means the people of fire. Well, that is something I’m exploring in the Ego collection, which is still a work in progress and a layered conversation. I don’t mind taking a whole year to work on it. I don’t want to rush it.
Was it the success of the Ayo Bench which pushed you to think of creating a new collection?
Josh: The Ego collection started off with the mindset that I needed to make a collection off the Ayo Bench. But in my process of trying to make this collection, I was falling prey to all the classical structural norms. I was asking myself: “what are people going to buy? What is going to make me more money?” I was focused on the ego. But then it came to me that I needed to kill that ego, to kill the constructs. I needed to be real with myself, acknowledging my success as a designer, but also remembering the responsibility to design a better world and keep the conversation going. That’s why I have now gone back to what was actually my first exploration as an artist. In 2016 I was still in the university, and my final year’s project was a big bottle cover portrait that went viral a few months later. I collected materials from Abuja, Lagos, Delta State, and Benin to make this magnificent piece of art. Fast forward to now, I have gradually gone back to work with found objects and discarded materials.
But don’t you already work with recycled materials? For instance, when you created a surfboard, collecting material from the ocean in Tarkwa Bay, in 2023?
Josh: Yes, but I wasn’t conscious about it. I wasn’t intentional. Now I’m questioning how to take an object and make it evolve beyond its original state of being waste to something more tangible. And that’s what this Ego collection has driven me into. I’m working on several pieces of furniture lighting and objects. I’m making some prototypes at the moment, like this one I put in front of my window. It is a visual simulation of sunlight made with a wooden frame and some red paper. I had to create it because I wasn’t getting enough sunlight in my studio and my mind has been engineered to absorb sunlight. In Lagos, I usually would wake up in the morning and open all my curtains to let in sunlight. Here in Paris there is no sunlight, so I made a window that comes with the sunlight.
Image Courtesy of the Artist
Image Courtesy of the Artist
Image Courtesy of the Artist
Image Courtesy of the Artist
You really focus on solution design.
Josh: I want to create solutions for people, not just for myself. As much as I like to create exquisite design pieces, I am also drawn to create solutions for communities, underserved communities. It was what I tried to do with the Tarkwa Bay community two years ago. Walking into the community, seeing that there’s a problem where these kids live, that they depend on foreign aids, just to get by daily, I thought it did not make any sense. These people are very skilful. It takes a certain level of skilfulness to be able to surf. And I see that as a resource. Two years ago, I had my team on the beach for 10 days. We made our first prototype but I quickly ran out of funding, so we put it on hold. I have also realized that it is not sustainable to just walk into a community, build a project and leave. So, what I’m doing right now is building a residency space in Tarkwa Bay for architects, designers, artisans, artists who will come and develop projects for the local community. We are also setting up a workshop in the same space. I see this infrastructure as a more sustainable way to create an impact. The hope is to create a ripple effect on the long-term, not just benefitting the surfing community, but also the community at large.
This kind of project is not cheap. Where will you find the funds?
Josh: I’m a designer. I’m also designing ways to reduce the amount of funding that I will need. I’m personally putting the money for the initial stage. We already have the land: one of the surfers has a space, but he doesn’t have the money to build something on it. I’m physically, actively building up the place, laying all the bricks, working with wood… And I’m involving my followers, even if we are still in the initial stages. I’m also working on a wooden version of the Ayo Bench that I could sell at a lower rate to fund the residency project.
Moving from collectible to more mass available design?
Josh: As much as I love to design these monumental pieces, I’m also drawn to design solutions for people who cannot do it for themselves, who can’t afford luxury pieces. Ideally, as a designer, I should be looking for ways to get a manufacturer to take my design and mass produce it. I am very passionate about putting out pieces that are not sold for $2,000, design that can be collected for $10. That’s my dream. But it’s not something easy to do. The infrastructure it takes to create a piece like that would actually cost you millions of dollars and a lot of effort. It is understandable why a designer would rather put his energy in making collectibles. My own solution to this problem would be to leverage social impacts design, working with different communities across Nigeria.
About the materials you work with. You said, one of the reasons you chose some materials was also because you were not in the Global North. Did you change your approach, recently?
Josh: I try as much as possible not to limit myself. We see a lot of artists or designers who are known for using a particular medium or material. But for me, it would just limit the experience. I am more interested in the representation of the piece. I want for people to look at a piece and recognize it as one of mine. Ultimately, the materials I work with are what is readily available to me and what best represents the idea. I’m not going to travel out of Nigeria to import a material because I want to play with it. Even if I’m sure that being in Paris will influence my work somehow. At the end of the day, what I’m using here are also materials within my reach, that I find in dump sites in Paris. The Ego collection will be made with that in mind as those are the materials that informed the piece when I made it. Some of them, I am sure I will find them in Nigeria too, but they will always remind me of the time in Paris.
What are you going to do in the next few months?
Josh: I will soon go back to Nigeria, where I will work on the space in Tarkwa Bay. Then in March I have another two months residency in Angola with Arpino Design. I should be working on surfboard and surfing culture, on the way to use waste material to create surfboards. But I want to spend more time in Nigeria this year. I want to focus on the residency project, try to involve some institutions to keep it sustainable.
Talking about Nigeria, you are seen as a promise of the new generation of Nigerian designers: what is your take on the design scene in the country at the moment?
Josh: I would say the design community made a significant impact last year. I’ve been a part of the Design Week Lagos team since 2021, I think, and I can tell you for a fact that last year was a very impactful year. We saw more designers and we had the first student’s design competition. The first prize winner got around 1.5 million Naira in cash prizes (around €900) and a residency opportunity as well. This might not seem much to you, but it has so much impact! It is going to create a ripple effect on other people that are looking to come into design. I’ve always said that in the future design will be the new tech in Nigeria. That we are going to build tangible technology. And I see us getting to that point. Last year, I started a thing called designers union. For now, we are simply sharing a space and exchange ideas, talking to each other, testing the waters. But I believe that it will lead to something in a not so far future.
You really do move all across the board!
Josh: I see there’s a need for these things to be done, and there are very few people who are ready to grab the bull by the horns and move. They’re afraid of criticism. They’re afraid to fail. They’re afraid to be remembered as a person who started something but couldn’t see it to its end. But I really don’t care. If I say I’m going to do something. I’m going to do it even if it takes 10 years or five years.
You were saying more designers joined the scene last year. Who are those new designers?
Josh: It could be surprising to know that the people who are looking to come into design are people that are currently doing graphic design. And people who are in the tech space. They want to properly create tangible products and do some industrial design. You will also find some artists who want to explore materials and create pieces. I really do see a transition shaping up in the future, but this transition cannot happen if we don’t make the room. And I think it is my responsibility, as much as it is the responsibility of the designers before me, to create this space. Titi Ogufere has created a beautiful platform with the Design Week Lagos and my successes were built on that platform. I see the need to create more different platforms for other designers to come on board. I also see the need to be conscious of the things these designers are working on because It’s one thing to create a platform and it’s another thing to just have people coming in and try to create one exquisite piece, one unrealistic piece, that will take them years to find a buyer for. It is unrealistic. There are more simpler things, simple products that would make the design revolution in Nigeria. We need to go back to the basics and solve immediate needs. For me, it is a long-term game, and I don’t mind if I am unable to achieve everything. If someone else keeps going, then we will continue the good work. Anyway, we need to start having this conversation. It’s about building the structures for the people who will be coming in the future.
Note:
Profile image © Andre Oyakhilome.
