Laji Sanusi
<p class="font_7"><strong>Laji Sanusi is a self-taught artist and creative born and based in London. Working across traditional and digital art, his practice is rooted in experimentation, with work spanning cultural portraiture, identity and social issues.</strong></p>
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<p class="font_7">Sanusi’s work has appeared in publications and on platforms including <em>Artists Responding To</em>, Revolt and Dope Black Art, and has been exhibited at venues including London’s OXO Tower. In 2023, he won a Sky TV and NOW TV prize for his artwork inspired by <em>True Detective: Night Country</em>. His commissioned work has also included a piece for television producer Nkechi Carroll, while his work is held by collectors internationally.</p>
Ms. Misunderstood
Ms Misunderstood explores the space between perception and identity — between how a person is seen by others and who they know themselves to be.
Through Sanusi's distinctive approach to portraiture, a Black woman occupies the image with confidence and presence. The title plays with the idea of being “misunderstood”, inviting questions about the assumptions and narratives that can be projected onto Black women before their individual stories are known.
Rather than providing the viewer with a fixed interpretation of its subject, the work asks us to look more closely. Within Framed in Black, Ms Misunderstood speaks to visibility, self-definition and the right to exist beyond stereotype.
The work has also become part of the visual identity of the exhibition, having been selected as the principal background artwork for the Framed in Black campaign.
In Ms Misunderstood, Laji Sanusi explores the relationship between identity, perception and the experience of being seen beyond the assumptions placed upon us.
The work connects to Framed in Black through its consideration of Black womanhood, visibility and self-definition. Rather than reducing Black British experience to struggle alone, Sanusi makes space for individuality, beauty and presence. The portrait asks us to consider the difference between how someone is perceived and how they understand themselves — and the complexity that exists between the two.
That sense of visibility is central to Framed in Black: presenting Black British identity not as a single experience, but as something personal, layered and expansive.
