MADEULOOK began as a digital sketchbook. Part-archive, part-visual diary, and full of experimentation, the project sees British-Bangladeshi artist Ace document the ideas, symbols and internet rabbit holes that shape his practice in real time. What started as a space to collect and test visual language has gradually evolved into something much larger: a body of work that shifts between graphic design, digital art, textiles and political commentary, while maintaining the same restless curiosity that first attracted his community online.
Scrolling through MADEULOOK’s output feels a little like stumbling across an alternative archive of contemporary Britain; folklore sits alongside memes, traditional craft references collide with pixelated graphics, and national symbols are dismantled and rebuilt. Throughout it all, Ace is interested in the ways people construct identity, belonging and collective memory both online and offline. Rather than treating digital culture as disposable, his work approaches it as something worthy of preservation; a record of how communities tell stories, build meaning and communicate through images in the internet age.
That fascination with identity sits at the heart of Chronically Brit(ish.), Ace’s debut exhibition created alongside artist Tegan Chinogurei. Presented as a joint exploration of selfhood and nationality in the digital age, the exhibition responds to what the artists describe as dormant fascism within contemporary Britain. Through distorted symbols, reimagined iconography and fractured nostalgia, Chronically Brit(ish.) asks viewers to consider Britishness not as a fixed identity but as a performance, a condition and a constantly contested idea.
Many people will already recognise MADEULOOK through one of its most visible works: the now-viral “God Save Immigration” design. Created in response to the anti-immigration rhetoric and far-right demonstrations that dominated headlines in 2025, the work reclaims the Union Jack from the nationalism it is often used to represent. What began as a digital artwork quickly evolved into a wearable object, allowing the message to be worn in public spaces, no longer confined only to social media feeds. In doing so, the piece demonstrates one of the defining characteristics of Ace’s practice: the desire to transform online ideas into physical objects.
That design recently reached another milestone when it appeared on the cover of BRICKS, worn by politician Zack Polanski for BRICKS’ I Support You issue. Seeing the shirt adopted by a progressive political party leader felt fitting for a work rooted in solidarity, visibility and collective action. For Ace, however, the moment was about more than political endorsement. It was another example of how ideas can travel beyond their original context, finding new audiences and new meanings as they move through the world.
Below, we speak to the artist about digital folklore, British identity, and the strange life of images once they leave your hands.
Your studio is framed as a kind of “virtual sketchbook,” documenting experiments as they happen. How important is process-as-output to you, and what do you gain from making that usually hidden development stage public?
I use the internet as an archive of my experimentations, and over time, they show a development in my practice. I’m grateful that, by chance, people ended up fucking with it and stayed for the journey. I guess I gain a blog to reflect on my practice’s growth, as well as a source of community building for others interested in the vibe I’m putting out into the world.
Your work sits inside internet visual language, but doesn’t feel disposable in the way a lot of digital culture can be. How do you approach making work that feels rooted in online aesthetics while still holding weight or longevity?
My digital presence to me feels disposable as any other. My physical works, artwork and clothing aim to materialise my bubble of the world or internet. It comes from looking at my work retrospectively. Archiving personal and collective experiences across the digi-sphere for a future where maybe all the cool stuff we made behind screens isn’t accessible anymore.
I’m interested in how the invention of the internet and digital arts did not replace the place of the analogue arts in documenting our folklore and traditions.
You reference folklore alongside digital subcultures; what draws you to that pairing, and how do you translate something historically or culturally specific into a contemporary, screen-based form without flattening it?
I’m interested in how the invention of the internet and digital arts did not replace the place of the analogue arts in documenting our folklore and traditions, but it evolved into its own parallel place behind a screen, which not only served as an archive of existing folklore, but also gave space for a new world to create and extend stories. Its own language, semiotics, use of symbols, images, memes, spirits and ghouls. I’m also interested in the connection between traditional craft and digital design. It’s no coincidence that designs in cross stitch & beadwork look similar to early low pixel-based imagery of the newfound internet. It’s a direct pipeline that informs technological arts.
As a British-Bangladeshi artist working across digital media, how does your lived experience shape your visual language, even in more abstract or experimental pieces?
I’m not sure; I feel like I’ve had an abstract experience of life from what is fed to you as the ‘norm’ through media, etc. That’s informed an imaginative mind to create pieces of work I fit into. My work is a medium to visualise ephemeral feelings and hard-to-describe thoughts, connections I’ve come to realise between modes of existence.
The Union Jack is one of the most loaded symbols in British visual culture, and your version – especially “God Save Immigration” – deliberately unsettles that. Can you tell us about developing this design, and how intentional the move towards wearability was as a way of putting that message into public, everyday spaces?
Honestly, it all happened so randomly. I started to make work in response to the summer of 2025, where anti-immigrant protests and attacks on muslims and other communities had broken out all across the country. A disproportionate amount of media attention was given to Reform UK and the prospect of them winning. I wanted to subvert the flag that had grown to not only represent a legacy of imperialism, but also become a symbol of the far right to represent their fascist ideologies. And piss them off a little. And it worked, and a bunch of gammons hated it and a lot more liked it. Someone commented that you should make them into shirts. And I was like, you know what, yeah. I will make it into a shirt. I’ve always been into print design and explored a lot with textiles while University while I studied GCD at Central Saint Martins And want to continue exploring materialising my studio through wearability and textiles.
My work is a medium to visualise ephemeral feelings and hard-to-describe thoughts, connections I’ve come to realise between modes of existence.
We were thrilled to include your work in the upcoming BRICKS ‘I Support You’ issue, worn by cover star Zack Polanski. How did it first feel to see a political leader wearing this message you’ve designed, and how does that moment connect to your own understanding of what “support” looks like in practice?
It’s a bit surreal. I actually remember a couple of months ago thinking ‘I wish I could somehow get a shirt to him’, so when BRICKS reached out about the shoot, I was taken aback. Not only did I get the shirt to him, but he’s wearing it for BRICKS print cover. Crazy. When (not if) he becomes Prime Minister, it’ll be even crazier. I think support can look like many things, such as established platforms and figures putting on lesser-known artists/designers. But also it can look like a magazine like BRICKS giving their cover to commemorate Palestinian Journalists killed by Israel at a time where freedom of speech used to call out the Zionist Occupation is heavily criminalised.
I started to make work in response to the summer of 2025, where anti-immigrant protests and attacks on muslims and other communities had broken out all across the country. A disproportionate amount of media attention was given to Reform UK and the prospect of them winning. I wanted to subvert the flag that had grown to not only represent a legacy of imperialism, but also become a symbol of the far right to represent their fascist ideologies.
Zack Polanski wearing MADEULOOK T-shirt for BRICKS #15 ‘I Support You’ issue cover, shot by Jamie Salmons
Because your work lives largely online, it’s constantly being recontextualised, reposted, or reinterpreted. How much control do you want over meaning, and how much are you comfortable letting go?
I don’t think any of us have any control over it; the internet is a weird place, and a couple of screenshots and reposts later, the source gets lost sometimes. I think there is a problem with people and brands on bigger platforms stealing from smaller artists and designers, but I’m learning to let go and focus on more positive notes of how my work reaches people. One time I bumped into a girl with my flag printed out on a sign at the protest before House Against Hate. I’m not sure where she got the image from, but she said she didn’t know about my page but loved the message of the flag. I think that’s a cool example of how things trickle down to where they are needed.
Much of your work exists online, but Chronically Brit(ish.) brings these ideas into a gallery setting. What changes when audiences encounter your work physically rather than through a screen?
Making people look across both worlds – digital and analogue – is something I want to continue building on. I have built such a sick community around the page, people who get it. This intuitive D-I-Y process of world-building across mediums. The visual cultures it sits within, the undertones in our society it responds to.
Having in-person experiences is an opportunity to bring people together. People who planned to be there and passersby. The audience and scenes that surround MADEULOOK and Tegan’s practice are just full of so much energy, and bringing it together is just a great opportunity.
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