In Conversation with Hillarynx

We caught up with Hillarynx following the release of her latest music video and film screening, The 3rd. A London-based artist, writer, and vocalist, Hillarynx’s practice moves fluidly across music, film, and political storytelling.

The 3rd is a striking and poetic visual work, inspired by Ousmane Sembène’s seminal 1966 film Black Girl. The music video was unveiled at a sold-out screening at South London Gallery, as part of Black British Hood Feminism: Building Creative Communities. The event centred art as a tool for dialogue, helping us collectively unpack the realities we inherit and the futures we intend to build. If you haven’t watched The 3rd yet, we encourage you to do so - not just as a piece of art, but as an invitation to engage, respond, and deepen the wider conversation. We are witnessing a generation of artists who are not afraid to challenge, question, and provoke — using their talents to strengthen community, not escape from it.

Their work challenges power and uplifts the community, using sound and image as tools to alchemise grief, rage, and memory into acts of collective resistance. Grounded in a background of political organising and grassroots campaigning, Hillarynx treats art as a site of struggle and possibility. Projects such as Sayyings and now The 3rd blur the line between creativity and activism, carving out interdisciplinary spaces for healing and transformation. Hillarynx is not simply making art — they are building pathways for liberation.

Rooted in Black British Hood Feminism, The 3rd reclaims the act of masking, as both survival and defiance in a world that often demands silence from Black women and marginalised genders. Directed and produced by Lauren Taylor Gee, the film extends Hillarynx’s ongoing body of work, Sayyings, blending music, film, and cultural memory to confront state violence, patriarchy, and the tense line between visibility and erasure. First written in motion — literally on the Victoria Line — the song channels frustration into creation, transforming rage into imagery, sound, and narrative. At the centre of the visual is a Benin mask: a metaphor of protection, ancestry, ceremony, and resilience. For Hillarynx, who identifies as neurodivergent, it also honours the everyday act of “masking” as a means of survival, self-protection, and resistance. One of the core lyrical questions — “Why must we suffer from one another?” — threads personal loss, including the death of an aunt to domestic violence, into a wider critique of systemic harm. The work refuses the silencing of Black women’s anger, transforming it into remembrance, voice, and collective mourning.

The track is co-written with Anna Adetiba, Raef Commissar, Hamish Rooser, James Tong Han Lee, and Sravudh Tanhai, shaped through improvisational jam spaces across London — bridging collaboration with political urgency.

“Music is deeper than sound. For far too many of us, we are taught that life must be “nasty, brutish and short” — but why can’t it be joyful, loving, and liberating without compromising the planet or each other?" - Hillarynx

Work like The 3rd reminds us that art is not a mirror but a weapon, a wound, a balm — and sometimes all three at once. Our communities need artists who provoke, who question, who imagine. Hillarynx is doing that work with clarity, conviction, and care. We are honoured to witness it.

Click here to watch The 3rd

Cinematographer: Morgan K Spencer.