Here is a beautiful video by Femi Kayode Amogunla on names and contemporary attacks against it by ignorance and amnesia. Also, poetry, drums, and dance.
Read more about the artist here.
Browsing the archives for the Art category.
Here are photos taken at the exhibition of photos and paintings by Nigerian artist Victor Ehikhamenor.
The exhibition, titled Amusing the Muse, took place between April 27 and May 31, 2013, at Temple Muse, 21 Amodu Tijani street, Off Sanusi Fafunwa, Victoria Island, Lagos.
The artworks beautifully arranged around the premises of the Temple Muse (which is also an events shop, bookstore, and a fashion & lifestyle showroom), were given names like “I don’t know where to but let’s go”, “To all the first ladies who love themselves”, “Coup plotter before shower”, “Your head is correct”, “Home sweet home”, “Mr president after the coup”, “Adam and Eve waiting for a flight out of Eden”, “Your dancing is music inside my head”, “Yesterday and today waiting for tomorrow.”, “Your music is dancing inside my head”, “Nobody came to us”, and “Opportunities in the land of closed doors”.
Of form, the work varied from “Charcoal on canvass” to “Paintforation on handmade paper”, “Charcoal and oil pastel on canvas”, “Ink wash and acrylic on paper”, “Latex paint and charcoal on handmade paper”, and “Acrylic on wood and fabric”.
My interview with Victor has just been published at NigeriansTalk.
At the Goethe Institut this evening, to attend the monthly Author Interaction there, there were drinks, and brilliant artists from various fields chatting, arguing, and sharing anecdotes and opinions on each other’s works. This is the whole purpose of the event, it turns out. Poet and novelist Lola Shoneyin, journalist and artist Victor Ehikamenor, journalist and writer Sam Umukoro, and poet and author Kume Ozoro, all sat and read from their works while fielding questions from the very interactive, attentive, active, and articulate audience.
Lola Shoneyin is the author of the famous novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, and an evergreen book of feminist poetry So All the While I Was Sitting on an Egg. Victor Ehikamenor is the author of Excuse Me! a collection of anecdotes previously published at 234Next newspapers, and the artist behind Amusing the Muse, an exhibition of drawings and paintings, on till May 31. Sam Umukoro, who worked previously with the Guardian, is the publisher of a website devoted to interviewing famous Nigerian writers, celebrities, and newsmakers. He has also published a book (whose name I have now shamelessly forgotten). The fourth guest, Kume Ozoro, is the author of a collection of private love poems.
Met also, for the first time, a few people with whom I have interacted over the social media for months, and even years. Deji Toye is one of those brilliant rascals, present in most of every cerebral gathering in Lagos, vocal and engaging in each of them sometimes to be mistaken for the host, and effacing enough to miraculously evade capture at crucial moments after the show for a short aside conversation. Until today. An affable man. I also had a chance encounter with Marc, the director of the Institut who sat around through the event and paid great attention to everything going on, sometimes gesticulating to the host to move it forward whenever the subject began to dwell too long on a controversial point. Then, there was Gbemisola, a loyal reader of the blog who surprisingly was able to recognize me out of a crowd, to my pleasant surprise. I also met Sola, a graduate of Theatre at the University of Ibadan who invited me to come see a few of his live theatre workshop/performances in Ikeja which takes place once every month. I intend to, sometime.
With writer/columnist Bayo Olupohunda much later around Ikoyi, among defiant spirits of the Bogobiri club, dreadlocks woven taut on a couple of heads, we chatted for hours with Swedish journalist Erik Esbjörnsson in town to research the portrayal of women in Nollywood movies – an interest of both himself and Mr. Olupohunda. We talked Nairobi, Uppsala, Eldoret, Germany, and Iowa, beers flowing around the warm glow of the club insides. It is “Marley Day” in Lagos, although, curiously, none of the sounds from the muffled bar speakers played Raggae. Outside, painted on the fences and gate in colourful motifs of the street, are the colours of Lagos, and scrap metals that wear visual arts like fancy clothes. I could as well have been in Fela’s famous Africa Shrine.
It’s night now, and I’m back home, in the arms of Mrs. Tubosun, where I rightly belong.
Once upon a time, a camera – a Canon handheld camera. Two cameras, actually, of the same brand, both purchased in the US. That is where the story begins and stops, except for a few other details: each originating in a Radio Shack shop, for about $250, and both ending up lost, along with a treasure trove of photographs that would never again be retrieved. One originated in Providence, Rhode Island, and disappeared at Six Flags, Missouri. The other at Radio Shack, Glen Carbon, and disappeared in a taxi in Lagos Nigeria.
And so one day, a bright idea: why not kill two birds with one stone? The camera on one of the latest Sony Xperia smartphones is reputed to be one of the best in the market. And since in need of a new phone anyway, an investment in a smart phone – the first for this traveler reputed for unexplainable reticence with regards to new technological fads – seemed, all of a sudden, like a good idea. The traveller gains access to the latest perks in mobile technology as well as a handheld camera all embedded in the same device.
It seems now to have worked so far, except for the occasional wait for the camera function to activate when summoned in the middle of another phone function. With thousands of new app functionalities to improve the camera experience, there seems to be something to keep me occupied for a few months to come. And then, a few days ago, I stumbled on Instagram, and the journey is complete. Here’s a platform for showcasing the trial and errors of one’s photographic experiences and experiments with colour and filter.
Enjoy these very few ones around Lagos, through the eyes of an Xperia lens.
This short documentary on Nigeria, said to “address the serious issue of corruption in governance” just made news by being banned by the Nigerian Film and Censors Board. I’d never heard of it until today, but since it concerned the government so much as to attempt to put a muzzle on it, then it must have some value for the enlightenment of the citizenry. According to news reports, the documentary was “released late in 2012, was produced by young filmmaker, Ishaya Bako, in partnership with the Open Society for West Africa [OSIWA].“
Watch with me!
What do you think after watching it?