Waste Beads is a body of work that reimagines the Igbo waist bead (Mgbaji Ukwu) as both material and metaphor. Constructed from discarded plexiglass waste cut into bead-like forms, the works explore how identity is fragmented, erased, and reclaimed across histories shaped by displacement and survival.

Within Igbo culture, waist beads carry layers of meaning linked to femininity, spirituality, sensuality, social identity, protection and rites of passage. In Waste Beads, these meanings are expanded into a wider reflection on the Igbo experience impacted by the enduring effects of slavery, colonisation, the Nigerian Civil War, and the sustained systemic marginalisation that followed. Through layered compositions, repetitive forms, and intricate linear structures, Waste Beads examines the lingering effects of erasure and the ongoing struggle to reclaim cultural identity within contemporary African and diasporic realities.

Material transformation is central to the work. Plexiglass offcuts — fragments often discarded after production — are reconfigured into objects of value, memory, and symbolism. This transformation mirrors the resilience of communities whose histories and identities have repeatedly been suppressed, misrepresented, or displaced. By converting waste into ornament and monument, the work questions systems that determine what is preserved, what is forgotten, and whose histories are allowed visibility.

The repetitive arrangement of bead forms also reflects the rhythm of oral tradition, ancestral continuity, and inherited memory. Each fragment functions as both an individual unit and part of a larger structure, echoing the relationship between personal identity and collective history. Through this process, Waste Beads becomes an archive of survival — one that connects spirituality, feminism, migration, race, inequality, and belonging.

At its core, the work is about rebuilding: rebuilding memory from fragments, rebuilding identity after erasure, and rebuilding cultural connection across time, geography, and diaspora experience.

Waste Beads is an act of reconstruction: of material, identity, and history.