The annual LagosPhoto Festival presents it’s twelfth edition themed “Memory Palace” which explores human relationships with memory and the generative potential of photography and images to spark visual intellect and restitute decaying and lost memories. This year, we have evolved the conversation from Home Museum to Memory Palace. Memory Palace brings that familial loci of heritage and history into a sharper focus and closer to home. The Memory Palace technique is a memorisation strategy, based on visualisation of familiar spatial environments to recall information. The technique involves recalling to memory a location or physical space that one is exceptionally comfortable or familiar with and in this location attempt to grasp at those visual clues and images that shape memory with an awareness of the fragility of recollection, its fragments and the radioactive decay associated with trying to grasp at memory. As we build our cosmology and familial safe spaces, we begin to restore, restitute, repair lost memories and archives that are stashed away in our individual and collective consciousness. LagosPhoto 21 – Memory Palace is experimental and performative in its dissemination with a clear attempt to remediate, restore and reimagine heritage and historiography as it relates to Africa and its diasporas. Through the Memory Palace, LagosPhoto delves deeper into the urgent burning and unresolved topic of restitution and the role of photography in remediating and accelerating the agency and hopes of repair whether through fantastical story telling pseudologia fantastica – characterized by the creation of eloquent and interesting stories, sometimes bordering on the fantastic; or grasping at faint memories interspersed with facts and critical fabulation (to borrow the term coined by Saidiya Hartman)
Artists/Programs:
Project: Searching for Prince Emmanuel Adewale Oyenuga/ Unpacking the Suitcase.
Backstory: In 1967, Prince Adewale Emmanuel Oyenuga enrolled as a student at the art school Escuala Massana in Barcelona. Three years later he and his wife Elizabeth decided to leave Barcelona for London. Prince Oyenuga left a suitcase with his archive with his close friend Luisa Guadayol in Barcelona, who never heard from him again. In 2016, Luisa passed away and her daughter Ana Briongos is resolute in her quest to return the suitcase to Emmanuel Adewale Oyenuga and or his family in Nigeria.
The material found in the suitcase points to different social and cultural moments in the history of Nigeria and beyond: the Nigerian Civil War, the cultural ties between two countries, Nigeria and Spain, the legacy of the artist, the story of emigration, Nigerian studio photography of the 70’s and first and foremost, to restitution.
We were engaged in a discussion about restitution through the legacy of the artist, Prince Emmanuel Adewale Oyenuga.
If you have any information about Prince Emmanuel
Adewale Oyenuga, please contact us at info@africanartists.org.
Zanele Muholi
Zanele Muholi is a visual activist, humanitarian and photographer from Umlazi, Durban. Muholi is invested in educational activism, community outreach and youth development. She lives and works in Umbumbulu, South Africa.
LagosPhoto21 presents for the first time a new body of work by Zanele Muholi that has emerged from decline and fall of previous pre-pandemic global systems. The exhibition will be centered on the theme of the portrait and its interpretations across different spatial and perceptual experiences narrated by the artist in a form of an engaging mind game.
Cristina de Middel
Cristina de Middel is a photographer whose work investigates photography’s ambiguous relationship to truth. Blending documentary and conceptual photographic practices, she plays with reconstructions and archetypes that blur the border between reality and fiction. After a successful career as a photojournalist, de Middel stepped outside of the photojournalistic gaze. She then produced the critically acclaimed series The Afronauts in 2012, which explored the history of a failed space program in Zambia in the 1960s through staged reenactments of obscure narratives. De Middel’s work shows that fiction can serve as the subject of photography just as well as facts can, highlighting that our expectation that photography must always make reference to reality is flawed. She lives and works in Mexico.
This year, LagosPhoto will reflect on previous editions and their prognostic potential in dealing with and addressing futures. LagosPhoto will (re)present The Afronauts, an iconic body of work by Cristina de Middel. A project that encapsulates the methodology and philosophy of LagosPhoto whereby personal narratives, critical fabulation and research trumps reportage about the lives of “others”. It is also fitting at this time because LagosPhoto firmly believes that as we gradually emerge from the pandemic syncopated global systems, we emerge into a new timeline that takes its agency in the present moment.
Hassan Hajjaj
Hassan Hajjaj is a contemporary Moroccan artist known for his photography, printed fabrics, and films. In perhaps his best known series, ‘Kesh Angels, Hajjaj captures the unique street culture of young female bikers in Marrakesh. Meant to conflate Western perceptions of Arabic society, Hajjaj uses the language of fashion photography, to produce portraits of figures dressed in colorful North African garb. Set within frames of consumer products, including Coca-Cola and Louis Vuitton, the artist’s images recontextualize both fine art photography and popular culture. “Born in 1961 in Larache, Morocco, he moved to London to live with his father at 13 years old. As a young man, Hajjaj worked as a music promoter, often tasked with the job of decorating the interiors of club venues with designs, furniture, and flowers. Over the following decades, while working as a designer, the artist began producing photographs and films which conveyed the complications of his cultural identity. He currently lives and works between Marrakesh, Morocco and London, United Kingdom.
This year’s edition of the festival will reflect on previous editions of LagosPhoto and their prognostic potential in dealing with and addressing futures. LagosPhoto will (re)present Hassan Hajjaj’s “Kesh Angels” which celebrates the women in Marrakesh through vernacular architecture, craft making, locally sourced objects, materiality and design and the role of portraiture in situating visual story telling. His playful juxtapositions of colors, patterns, and forms strike a connection between the old and new, between Western and other cultural paradigms.
“Give us This Day” Obayomi Anthony – Solo Exhibition
Obayomi Anthony present led in collaboration with Taurus Foundation of Arts and Sciences.
Joseph Obanubi
Joseph Obanubi, born in 1994, is a Lagos-basedmultimedia (visual) artist. His works explore the relationship between Identity, Fantasy, Technology and Globalization. He revisit/reimagine fragments found in everyday experiences as his practice is considered a visual bricolage – a (re)construct of different subjects taken from their original context into a new one. His creative ideology stems from concepts of delusion, surrealism, futurism and experimentation, as he is attracted to in-between states as opposed directness. He constantly seek new disparities and possibilities while creating alternative/insightful ways of seeing.
LagosPhoto21 presents “Altered Reality and Escapes” a series by Joseph Obanubi, which represents the flawed physical state and emotional imbalance that exists in the society today. These series are metaphoric representations of altered reality, an attempt to accentuate the ways in which escapes (spaces) are created in our minds. Obanubi’s work talks about escapism, the desirable shelters that we create facing the inevitable struggles that permeate everyday life.
Artist Talk: Ibrahim Mahama.
LagosPhoto presents an artists talk delivered by Ghanain Artist and Author Ibrahim Mahama. Mahama will be speaking on his recent exhibition “Lazarus” and the importance of creating regenerativeeconomies for communities where artists live and work. Renzo Martens (White Cube, Lusanga) will respond to this lecture and the conversations will be moderated by Hannah O’Leary, Director of Sotheby’s, London.
Art of Portraiture Photography Workshop with Iké Udé
Iké Udé presented in collaboration with The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
Hermes Chibueze Iyele
Hermes Chibueze Iyele (b.2001) is a rare talent. He was discovered during one of Qdance Center’s talent development projects known as ‘The M-A-D House’ (Music, Acting and Drama) in 2014. Since that program he has consistently performed as part of a group in Iwal’ewa (2015, Lagos, Nigeria), Rainmakers (TED Global 2017, Arusha, Tanzania), Yuropa (2018: Germany, 2019: Mali, Serbia, Holland) In 2018 he had his choreographic debut with a collaborative performance with Chioma Ebinama and I Am Isigo (2018, ArtX Lagos, Nigeria) Unsustainble Privileges (2018, Lagos, Nigeria) and as a solo artist with The Village in Me (2018, Bariga, Nigeria).
LagosPhoto21 presents Emotional Intelligence, a performance exhibition by Hermes lyele featuring dance, photography projects. Emotional Intelligence captures the importance of conveying emotions for comprehension of the need to incorporate and acknowledge the differences among individuals that do not pose a threat to their community as progression towards a more inclusive society. The event will include a panel discussion with three artists of different practices with the aim to cross reference the importance of emotional intelligence in the artistic processes.
lyele’s exhibition will also include a dance performance with selected students from the YECA (Youth Empowerment through Contemporary Art) Programme.
LagosPhoto x Voice NFT experience
LagosPhoto21 in collaboration with Voice presents an FT experience showcasing the NFT creations of artists Ken Nwadiogbu Ayanfe Olarinde and their co-creators for the Voice FT Residency project curated by Azu Nwagbogu
Panel Discussions – End SARS Movement/Activism
Join us for a panel discussion on the pivotal role of various art mediums in activism, with the End Sars Protest as a case study. From posters to memes, and digital art works, the use of imagery and design together resulted in creating artefacts of our time. These art forms sparked the much needed conversation and awareness regarding the police brutality in Nigeria that expanded into a global Campaign.
The Panel will consist of photographers who played an important role in the documentation of the End Sars protest in 2020, namely Ugo Emebiriodo, Benson Ibeabuchi, Etinosa Yvonne and will be moderated by Amanda Iheme.
Stills from Things Fall Apart – Outdoor Opening/Visit.
LagosPhoto in collaboration with the Modern Art Film Archive presents this selection of archival images from the set of the 1971 film rendition of Things Fall Apart. Film Stills by Stephen Goldblatt encompasses seventy-four large-scale printed installations to be exhibited at Falomo Underbridge, Lagos.
Film Screening: Things Fall Apart by Jason Pohland.
Recently screened as part of the Festival of Forgotten Films in collaboration with LagosPhoto, this year’s program presents this film screening in alignment with the theme of “Rapid Response Restitution”. Things Fall Apart was part of an archival discovery consisting of over 2000 unpublished film stills, various production papers, correspondences, as well as the film print of the production.
Film Screening: White Cube by Renzo Martens.
White Cube is a feature-length documentary film by Dutch artist, Renzo Martens, that follows the journey of Congolese plantation workers as they set a new precedent. The film centers on Cercle d’Art desTravailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), a plantation workers’ cooperative based on a former Unilever plantation in Lusanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. The workers successfully raise sufficient funds and co-opt the concept of the ‘white cube’ to buy back their land from multinational corporations and gain ownership of what is rightfully theirs. This film is important as it explores the history of neo- colonialism, its impact, and the success of increasing decolonisation movements.
Date: November 4th – December 4th, 2021.
