Working across painting, drawing, sculpture and performance Lavar Munroe has established a multi-faceted and energetic practice that is embedded in anthropological, and socio-historical ontologies. Carnivalesque in tone, Munroe’s recent textile works, explore conditions of conquest, sovereignty and Western notions of the exotic, primitive Other through the nineteenth century phenomena of human exhibition, or the ‘human zoo’. He investigates how historical materials frame these partial, ethnocentric narratives and considers our relationship to these artifacts in the present-day, against a postcolonial framework.

He has undertaken residencies in Chapel Hill and Florida, USA and exhibited across an international framework. Recent presentations include Grants Town Trickster at Jack Bell Gallery in London, UK in 2014, and Area 919: Artists in the Triangle at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, USA, in 2015. Munroe was selected for participation in the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in Italy, titled All the World’s Futures.