This month, instead of going through our own stash of saves, clippings and cultural ephemera, we’ve asked the London-based Belgo-Nigerian architect, writer and occasional filmmaker Ewa Effiom to share what’s in the air. Turns out, it’s action films, ’90s nostalgia and a dollop of meringue …

Words Ewa Effiom

Despite El Niño’s best efforts, I think we can all agree that summer is well and truly over. While we all transition into some sofa-laden, blanket-clad permutation of hibernation, ushered in by the sobering circadian reset that comes with the return of Greenwich Mean Time, it’s important that we stay positive. Everything’s going to be OK. We will see the sun again and, until then, all we need to do is find things to occupy ourselves …

Dim the lights, and – action!

In times like these, when mental fortitude plays a disproportionate role in the preservation of my sanity, I like to revel in the pugnacious comforts of action films. While a Bayhem, Wickian or even McTiernan-style depiction of the genre normally does the job, Wakaliga Uganda’s film at the Chisenhale Gallery in East London (until 6th December) might just see me through the season. Kibuuka Omumbaale – a frenetic onslaught of flying kicks and prop-gun shootouts – takes the repatriation of the eponymous Baganda warrior-god’s remains from Cambridge as its starting point. It asks what such a hero could do today as it follows a present-day teenager endowed with the powers of the ancient god. By reworking classic Hollywood tropes, it becomes an anti-colonial satire, a superhero origin story, a slapstick riot and a mythic epic, bringing contemporary Ugandan society into a head-on confrontation with its ancestors.

Tamagotchi time travel

For the lovers amongst us, Tate Britain’s The 90s: Art and Fashion (until 14th February 2027), curated by the inimitable Edward Enninful, puts Juergen Teller and Wolfgang Tillmans in the same room as Steve McQueen (main image above) and Yinka Shonibare, with a smattering of Aunty Viv (Westwood), Alexander McQueen, Ozwald Boateng and Joe Casely-Hayford for good measure. Having grown up in the decade, I find the images spark a peculiar kind of anemoia, which is strange given I lived through it, albeit timidly peering through the cracks of parental care, with a Tamagotchi in tow. The exhibition offers a glimpse of the world that preceded ours, a time that felt simpler, freer and somehow more earnest. My Tamagotchi, for the record, did not survive the decade.

The unflinching eye of Arthur Jafa

I Am Tony, Arthur Jafa’s retrospective at New York’s New Museum (until 4th January 2027), is named after the jazz drummer Tony Williams and gathers four decades of film, video and sculpture, much of it taken from Jafa’s vast trove of imagery (he’d rather you didn’t call it an archive). If it wasn’t for the slushy hellscape that is New York in the winter, I’d be on a plane there. I’ll settle for the catalogue I bought on eBay, leafing through the pages from the comfort of my sofa, Ovaltine in hand. (Do people still drink that?)

In the mix

Though Instagram is the only Meta product I publicly admit to using, Facebook Marketplace is my guilty pleasure. Which was very much to the chagrin of everybody else in my household until it delivered an A901 Kenwood Chef this summer. The Chef launched at the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1950, and its basic design has changed little since. I don’t want to be the person who extols the virtues of the ’70s ad nauseam, but they did get some things right. The Chef was designed to ease the work that fell to housewives. Now it eases the tension of living with me, with îles flottantes (poached meringue on custard) as penance for the wine-stained teeth I’ll be sporting until Christmas. Overindulgence is the one upside to the colder months. I like to see it as an evolutionary measure against the risk of starvation during hibernation. My household remains unconvinced.

Photography credits: © Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony, 2026. Exhibition view: New Museum, New York. Courtesy New Museum. Photo: Dario Lasagni. Artwork featured in the image: Arthur Jafa, More Real Than 1000 Newmans, 2026; Sir Steve McQueen, Bear 1993 © Steve McQueen. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and Marian Goodman Gallery. Tate Collection; Eileen Perrier, Untitled, Afro Hair and Beauty Show, 1998 © Eileen Perrier. All rights reserved, DACS 2026; Arthur Jafa, Notebooks, 1980s–2007. Three-ring binders, plastic sleeves, paper, mixed media, dimensions variable. © Arthur Jafa. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone.