The Lockadooks

The Lockadooks explore whether—and how—Locko can reclaim the visual language of racist caricature within his own practice. The series serves as a means of reclaiming the power to depict Black Americans from the hands of historic oppressors who produced dehumanizing caricatures in the 1920s and 1930s. By blending portraiture, caricature, and beauty, The Lockadooks transform these once-harmful visual conventions into a multitude of complex likenesses that assert agency, dignity, and self-definition.