Lucky Bean Cafe

The Story

Malaina Joseph-Sobers, the contemporary British African-Caribbean artist, draws deeply from her transformative life journey to inspire her work. Born in Suriname and raised in Guyana during the politically charged, post-colonial unravelling of the 1990s, her artistic lens was shaped by the intense polarisation between the country's African and Indian heritage populations. At the age of sixteen, Malaina relocated to London, navigating a complex urban environment that stood in sharp contrast to her rural Guyanese background. She describes this transition as her Guyanese past being a "palimpsest" - an older script being written over by a new layer of urban identity. Her migration story resonates profoundly with the historical and cultural narratives of the Notting Hill area, which has long been central to the experience of the earlier Windrush and subsequent Caribbean generations. Her work offers a meditation on the dualism of identity, migration, and the constant negotiation between longing and belonging.

The Artwork

At the Lucky Bean cafe, you can see some of Malaina's pieces on display…

Malaina's compelling body of work serves as a reflection on memory, identity, and the relationship between the past and present. Her pieces, which she aptly terms "mindscapes," are created through layers of abstraction that reimagine the sensory world of her Guyanese childhood. This includes vivid recollections of fishing trips, jumbie-stories told around the fireside, and the potent, earthy aroma of rain on hot soil. As a painter, her technique is intricate and deliberate, involving dabbing, blending, brushing, and layering textures to achieve compositions that balance the physical and the imagined. She uses juxtaposition effectively, contrasting monochromatic elements, which suggest Guyanese night-time, with vibrant bursts of orange—a nod to sunsets and the colourful transitions of her early days in "England’s green and pleasant land." This technique often incorporates sfumato, which she finds unconsciously helps to reveal the layered nature of memory and identity.