Yegwa Ukpo is taking on tech feudalism with his compassionate warrior project Rhizopunk
Words by Helen Jennings
“How do I make something that doesn’t exist here at the moment that would be very cool if it did?” poses Yegwa Ukpo. “How do I create something that serves as an infrastructure for other people to build brighter futures?” He’s referring to the jump-off point for his latest sustainability project, Rhizopunk. But this pioneering thinker has always asked – and answered – this same question with each of his revolutionary concepts. A quiet giant of Nigeria’s creative scene for well over a decade, Ukpo’s vision has always broken new ground where others can thrive.
With a background in web and graphic design, he helmed an advertising and branding agency before opening Lagos menswear store Stranger in 2013. This concept space was ahead of its time, home to experimental local designers (Kenneth Ize, Orange Culture, U.MI-1) alongside their Japanese and Belgian counterparts (Yohji Yamamoto, Ann Demeulemeester, Comme des Garçons) as well as a library, café, indigo dyeing pit, workshops and more. “It went through many mutations but always remained a place where young creatives could come, learn and have conversations,” he recalls of Stranger’s nurturing role for the city’s nascent artists.
By the time Stranger shuttered in 2018, Ukpo was ready to more directly address the issues of sustainability and consumerism tied to contemporary design in all its guises – all driven by capitalist desires prescribed by the Global North. “I started to research Nigeria’s traditional design practices and the guild systems in indigenous societies, which functioned as spaces of learning and spiritual development. They resulted in objects that not only had an aesthetic value but cultural utility as well. Whether used for hunting, religious ceremonies, childbirth or denoting a certain standing in society, they each held a knowledge that those societies depended upon.”
This research fed into Newtype, a “maintenance practice drawing on ancestral wisdom ecologies” to find liberating design approaches with relevance for today. This philosophy uses the concept of ‘play’ to transcend proscribed rules and realities and build new mindsets rooted in care – for one another and the world around us. Play refers to the game we’re in – understanding existing parameters. Players are the curious practitioners challenging those perceived notions and pushing beyond. And the ‘Playground’ is where the players can riff, improvise, respond to one another and imagine with intention. “We can’t find solutions to this big issue of sustainability based in inherited systems that are extractive, exploitative and only interested in creating more. So, let’s look back to our own cultures, intuitions and beliefs and let them move us forward,” he asserts.
Taking off during the Covid lockdown, Newtype attracted a robust online community where creators could explore and collaborate. The project became peer-driven and open-source – a realm where intrepid souls could propose healing rituals and routines around craft, food, clothing, shelter and being. Sadly, Ukpo lost is father in 2021, necessitating a time of mourning, and for him to focus on the family business in Calabar. But he took the opportunity to explore the city’s untapped possibilities, and now this irrepressible mind is cooking up the next chapter of his decolonising, climate-responsive practice.
“In Nigeria today, we have problems in the North with the extremist groups enacting wars but if you’re in Lagos or Abuja, it’s like nothing is going on. Meanwhile young people have to prioritise making money over being creative in order to make ends meet. How are we holding together? There is all of this restlessness and yet nothing seems to be building to a critical mass. So, I went back to the founding tenets of Newtype. I started thinking about agriculture and indigenous environmental knowledge to be explored.”
Ukpo considered the fact that in Nigeria, as elsewhere, commercial farmers commonly use GMO seeds and chemical fertilisers, and focus on cash crops such as palm oil and cocoa, which ravages the soil and leaves the country reliant upon food imports. This led him to investigate building informal networks based on inventive composting techniques, and from there to the symbolic importance of rhizomes in the soil. From these embryonic roots, Rhizopunk is taking shape – a speculative movement challenging “dystopian tech futures” by creating alternatives with what we have in the here and now.
Masiva Terkulturo is his fledgling agriculture project in Calabar that addresses the country’s soil crisis. Starting in his own back yard, he’s borrowing the Japanese compositing method of bokashi to ferment organic matter into fertiliser, and developing vermicompost (worm manure) to build a lustrous vegetable garden. “The issues around agriculture are very complex. We need to get rid of these politicians! But I’m saying, let’s just start and see where it takes us in this community, you know?”
“I am a big believer in aesthetics enabling culture”
Meanwhile Atelier Masiva will address the aesthetics of Rhizopunk through desirable clothing and design. For Ukpo, style always goes hand in hand with substance. “I am a big believer in aesthetics enabling culture. If you want people to be interested in something, you have to make it look sexy, right? From the overalls to the greenhouses, farming must look good,” he smiles. “I’ve always been interested in the intersection of workwear and fashion, and think functional clothing is an area that Nigerian brands could explore. I can imagine This Is Us making great agricultural silhouettes.”
And looking ahead even further to Rhizopunk’s role in education, Ukpo continues to contemplate guilds with the dream of developing rural centres for farming, carpentry, weaving and dying as well as digital skillsets. “Joining these guilds would mean you have a certain level of training and a certain level of quality is expected from you. As such, there would be uniforms for its members, and ceremonies that would appeal to Nigerians’ love of regalia. In that way, everyone has a dignity defined by your role in society.”
Influenced by designer Yokoi Gunpei’s idea of Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō (lateral thinking with withered technology), Rhizopunk proposes the use of proven tools in creative ways, rather than incessantly chasing tech innovation. It’s about building dynamic, ever-evolving environments that can, if loved and cultivated, lead to better days. Like Stranger before it, which was an anomaly when it first opened but left a legacy that continues to inspire Lagos’s swelling ethical style conversation, Rhizopunk leads the charge for change today. Ukpo is getting his hands dirty, still, as he digs these earthy foundations using ancestral intelligences with the potential to be transformative for all.
