Ronald Akili

Since 2009, Potato Head has been built under Ronald Akili’s hand, with the brand shaped from the ground up through a distinctly contemporary line of thinking. The work implied here is less about launching a name than about maintaining authorship over time: setting a structure that could hold, adapt and still read as his.

The meal as a family unit sits at the centre of Ronald Akili’s account of food. That nightly ritual sets out the basic terms of the craft as he describes it: cooking as duty, gathering as routine, and the table as the place where both are made visible. The point is not nostalgia so much as continuity. Four brothers, three sons and 21 first cousins map a large family structure around that food culture, where many people, and many plates, have long been arranged around a shared centre.

The answer stays consistent with the domestic logic that runs through his remarks: food as something made for others, and meals as a means of holding a group together.