RM9 5AN is a new commission and the first solo exhibition in a public art organisation by London-based artist Okiki Akinfe. Comprising a new series of large-scale oil paintings and lightboxes, Akinfe’s exhibition continues her ongoing engagement with identity, memory, class and place.
Drawing from the historical canon of painting and the visual language of gaming, animation and film photography, Akinfe’s work explores the ‘Black Lens’, a conceptual framework she developed to subvert stereotypical representations by demonstrating their absurdity. Often read as an invitation to unpack a riddle or a fable, in relation to a memory or a place, Akinfe’s paintings reference both satire and dissonance. In her previous works, Akinfe has reflected on childhood memories through the iconography of video games and disembodied monster legs, while other works have explored an ongoing interest in abstraction and figuration.
For her new commission at Peer, Akinfe builds on her work's interest in depictions of everyday life to explore larger questions concerning the construction of identity and its relationship to place. Acting as a love letter to her local high-street in Dagenham, this new body of work is a portrait of a place – specifically, the postcode district of RM9 5AN in Essex, just on the edge of London.
Reflecting on Essex’s history as a beacon of hope in the form of new towns for working-class Londoners, Akinfe’s paintings position the county as a site of possibility, once more – this time from the perspective of its newer West African communities. Referencing the traditions of English landscape painting – from J. M. W. Turner to John Constable – this new body of work explores emergent, once peripheral, cultural symbols embedded in her local high-street. Depictions of urban wildlife, shopfront signs, litter, food stalls and places of worship sit alongside nods to the town’s human presence, such as a Black figure, seen from the waist down. Framed within her signature use of empty canvas and grid-work, this new body of work gives focus to both specific and widely resonant moments of everyday British life.
Produced in a time of growing antimigrant sentiment and a visible presence of the far-right on British streets, Akinfe’s new commission engages in a form of world-building that defies the representation of public space as something exclusionary. Presented in the context of Peer’s high-street facing gallery, Akinfe has created an environment where subjects are suspended in their own sense of time and agency, while simultaneously speaking to a shared lived experience.
RM9 5AN is accompanied by a series of events as part of Peer’s Talks, Events and Workshops programme. Akinfe’s exhibition is part of Peer’s 2026 Programme, which examines themes including the construction of place, sovereignty and community and includes solo exhibitions by artists Leah Clements, Dala Nasser and Ceidra Moon Murphy.
Biography:
Okiki Akinfe (b. 1999, London) lives and works in London. Selected exhibitions include: Where The Wild Things Are, Ginny on Frederick, London, UK; and The Clearing, curated by Ekow Eshun at Space Un, Japan (both 2025); On Feeling, The Approach, London, UK (2024); Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun, curated by Yinka Shonibare, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2023); Hauntology: Ghostly Matters, curated by Aindrea Emelife, Mariane Ibrahim, Chicago (2023); What Now?, PM/AM Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (2022); and 1-54 African Art Show, DaDa Gallery, Paris (2022).
Supporters:
RM9 5AN is commissioned and produced by Peer, London.
Headline Support: Simon Nixon and Ginny on Frederick.
Peer’s 2026 Programme is supported by the Paul and Louise Cooke Endowment.
Peer is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation and is supported by Hackney Council through a Voluntary Sector lease.
Peer aims to be open and accessible to all. Please find further details here.
