The Sum of Our Parts: Lauren Halsey In Conversation With Lisa Anderson
On 5 August 2026, Lauren Halsey’s DIASPORA CALLING! premieres on Piccadilly Lights as a new commission by CIRCA, created in response to Ms. Lauryn Hill’s return to the cultural proposition she first launched in Brooklyn a decade ago. Made feverishly in the days leading up to its presentation, Halsey’s work transforms one of London’s most visible public spaces into a saturated, non-linear portrait of Black life, bringing together the everyday and the monumental, the street and the cosmic, the ancient and the future.
Curated by Ms. Lauryn Hill, the collaboration has developed through a close dialogue with London-based curator Lisa Anderson, whose work across the festival’s visual arts programme helped bring Halsey into the CIRCA commission while connecting the project to a wider ecology of artists and communities in Britain. At the centre of the project are three women whose practices approach culture as a form of public service: Hill’s call for the diaspora to gather and recognise its collective power, Halsey’s community-rooted practice in South Central Los Angeles, and Anderson’s commitment to creating platforms for Black artists and cultural exchange.
Ahead of the premiere, Anderson spoke with Halsey about her years long relationship with Ms. Hill’s music, their previous collaborations, the meaning of DIASPORA CALLING! and the infrastructure that can emerge when artists begin working from the inside out.