Afropean.com attended Exiting the Forest into a Sea of Open Arms (concluded 29 August 2026), a cohesive testament to the importance of brotherhood and community in the Black British art space. The exhibition featured a total of seventeen esteemed artists, all drawing on the interplay between identity, memory, and family.

In an exclusive interview with David Mensah, he breaks down the elements of nostalgia within his work titled: In the Forest of Lost Memory (2026), as a moving dedication to his grandfather. Using his signature themes of African regality, Mensah shares that he wanted the piece to feel like ‘walking into a forest where memories are leaves’. In the fragmented memories of his grandfather, Mensah weaves together the double-edged experience of being London-born, yet still forever tethered to one’s wider cultural roots in the African diaspora; specifically Ghana, in David’s case. 

He goes on to express how Renée Mussai’s Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain (2025), and her ‘photographic biography of ancestral altars’, encouraged him to develop themes of Ghanaian regality to restore the lack of visibility for Black individuals living at the time. This was a period when our ancestors were often depicted in the midst of traumatic experiences. Instead, Mensah’s In the Forest of Lost Memory (2026) shines a new light on an old tale in celebration of the historic legacies created in the paths paved by those before us.

By creating ‘love letters for future generations’ across his work, Mensah finds importance in portraying small, tender moments, particularly demonstrated in his British Journal of Photography award-winning photo of Nadeem Din-Gabisi – a subject which, over time, has become a ‘sort of muse’ for Mensah. In the near future, he seeks to focus on developing a solo project over the course of the next year.

Another notable work in the exhibition comes from Vibrantform founder Neequaye Dreph Dsane, whose There It Is (2025) offers a romantic portrayal of a dance between two lovers, representing him and his wife in a style Dreph shares is reminiscent of Malick Sidibé’s Nuit de Noël (1963).

Looking further into the work, one can also see an implicit critique of the sanitisation of Black art through visual languages which subvert expectations of palatability for art-world norms. From the allusion to wiped street tags to finger-gun references within sound system culture, Dreph’s commitment to creating a memory which ‘never existed but feel[s] real’ comes alive in the minute details of the work.

As its official debut, Vibrantform’s Exiting the Forest into a Sea of Open Arms is one that carries with it the spirit of intergenerational creativity, and pushes the boundaries of the small box that is the mainstream Black art category in predominantly white spaces.