ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Fun category.

At Ake Arts and Book Festival

For the last six days since Tuesday November 19th, writers, artists, book lovers, poets, and a few politicians, have gathered in Abeokuta for the maiden Ake Arts and Book Festival. A brain child of writer and poet Lola Shoneyin, the Festival played host to hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of visitors in the rock-head town, home to Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka – himself a presence at the event which took place at the June 12 Cultural Centre, Kuto.

The Festival featured the launching of Wole Soyinka’s play Alapata Apata as well as the command performance of the (Caine Prize-winning Rotimi Babatunde’s) stage adaptation of Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. There was also a number of “Book Chats” and dialogues with authors, as well as art exhibitions, symposiums, book fairs, one-one-one conversations with Wole Soyinka, poetry reading, among very many others.

Other writers and artists present for the Festival include Chibundu Onuzo (The Spider’s Daughter), Tope Folarin (Winner of the 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing), Peter Akinlabi (notable poet), Teju Cole (Open City), Ikhide Ikheloa (writer and critic), Victor Ehikhamenor (artist, and author of Excuse Me!), Molara Wood (blogger and author of Indigo), Binyavanga Wainaina (One Day I Will Write About This Place), Eghosa Imasuen (Fine Boys), Ayodele Morocco-Clarke, Igoni Barrett, Christie Watson, Remi Raji, Marlon James, Pelu Awofeso, Tolu Ogunlesi, Toni Kan, Ayodele Olofintuade, Chuma Nwokolo, Kunle Ajibade, among very many others. There was also the governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi and the Commisioner of Health in Ogun State, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka.

Pictures courtesy of KT and Tamilore Ogunbanjo

Art and Company At Project Space, Lagos

The public art project of Nigerian artist Emeka Udemba was up for discussion at the weekend, at his stomping ground at Badore, Lagos where his “Lagos Open – Ajegunle Invitation 2013” international public art project was unveiled at a cocktail for writers, artists, and journalists. The street art project itself would be open for viewing on Saturday 16th November at Ajegunle, a result of a week-long work by various artists on public structures and street corners in one of Lagos’ most popular slums.

Of the housing complex called Project Space where the social gathering took place, Emeka was very effusive, and equally effacing. His enthusiasm about what he sees as a chance to make art relevant enough to engage society and engender social change was affecting as he showed us around all the rooms in the house, but so was also his humility. Art isn’t just for money, he said, but for a chance to affect society. The house is indeed private, as seen by the living quarters there where a few artists currently reside who are on residency in Lagos. It is also a public art project of itself, an art edifice built modestly and to taste in a quiet corner of the Lagos Islands. The ornateness of the simplicity of design was evident, as was the craft and deliberateness put into creating wide and stimulating spaces for artistic expression. The furniture was made with deliberate simplicity, crafted likely by local artists, and well places around the kitchen, living quarters, and the man-made lawn where many of the guests sat. Beside the fence were two bicycles resting against a coconut tree. In another corner of the house is a man-made pool, in case any of the residents feel like getting immersed in water.

This space, Emeka tells me, was acquired more than ten years ago, and was developed gradually with personal funds from private exhibitions across Europe. Now, he hopes to open it up for art gatherings and events as a way to contribute to the culture of Lagos art circuits as well as keep the structure utilized during the long spells he spends outside the country with his family in Germany. And while food, drinks, and barbecue flowed through the crowd present (which at some point included musician Ade Bantu, Marc-Andre Schmachtel, the director of Goethe Instituut, Lagos, Bayo Olupohunda – a columnist with the Punch Newspapers, and a number of other artists and journalists), the serenity of a Lagos evening made itself evident through the silence, the soft chattering, the blowing winds of the coconut trees, and the darkening whispers of an Island at night and at rest in good company.

The art project starts today Monday and ends on Friday. Artists from around the world will descend on Ajegunle to paint and work on public structures there in collaboration with the residents of the area. The finished product will be launched on Saturday 16th November. More information here.

Photos taken with a Lumia 820. More can be seen on my instagram feed /kolatubosun.

Fagunwa Meets Adichie

Daniel O. Fagunwa (foremost Yoruba novelist) to Chimamanda N. Adichie (contemporary novelist):

Let me leave you with a prophecy. After all, what sort of ghost would I be if I didn’t say something profound about the future? Here it goes:

‘The great African novel will come. But it will not come from writers who insist on writing stories that mirror an African reality that they have reduced to a set of social issues. It will not come from the Afropolitan generation who mistake affluence for worldliness. It will not come from realism because Africans do not like the cannibalism of being fed repacked versions of their own lives. It will come from a mind that understands what the people want, their deepest darkest fears, the archetypes that shape their dreams, the past they’ve placed beyond memory and that has for that reason become their future, their delirious present, their sadness and their fantasy. A mind that imagines a story that is an alchemy of all these, that creates out of these something strange and beautiful, something that Africans understand whether the rest of the world gets it or not, a story that Africans can hold up as a mystery that dissolves their differences. That mind is the African writer to come, the messiah that, like other messiahs, “will only arrive when we no longer need him.”’

Read the rest of the stimulating fictional metadrama here. (via Brittle Paper)