By ADA DIKE
Poised to promote African culture in many parts of the world, young talented African documentary photographers,
historians and writers, have set out this years’ road trip to Saravejo, the
capital of Bosnia.
Known as “Invisible
Borders: Trans-African Photographic Initiative,” the team of about 10 Africans which
scheduled to depart Lagos in June, 2014 for a period of five months, travelling
through 20 countries by road aimed to tell stories about Africa through
photography.
Speaking
at a press conference held last week in Lagos, the leader of the team, Mr. Emeka Okereke, said that more than seven Africans from
Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Eritrea and Kenya, among others, would embark on
this year’s trip.
The Nigerian
documentary artist also revealed that Invisible Borders began in 2009 by a
group of artists who came together to explore the possibilities of arts
exchange.
“Invisible Borders, which began in Nigeria has
evolved to include participants from Ghana, Mozambique, Cameroon and so on. We
began as photographers, but some of us later became writers. The idea we are
trying to propagate is not limited to Africa. The relationship between Africa
and Europe is much more horizontal so this road trip aims to address that. We
focus on encounter and interaction in this year’s trip. In the past four years,
we got stuck at borders, but this time, we tried to make it more interactive
and defined. We had exhibition in Amsterdam last time and will have some
exhibitions this time,” said Okereke.
He further
hinted that funding for their trip is always a serious challenge to them.”There
is always a struggle in terms of support. We have put in 12 months preparation
trying to get sponsors and partners and some of them have been supportive, but
we need more sponsors and partners.”
Below are
the profiles of participants who are on their way to Saravejo:
Emeka Okereke
Emeka Okereke was born
in 1980. He lives and works between Africa and
Europe, moving from one to the other on a frequent basis. He came in contact
with photography since 2001. He is a member of Depth of Field (DOF)
collective, a group made
up of six Nigerian photographers. Presently, his works oscillate between
diverse mediums.
He uses photography,
poetry, video and collaborative projects to address issues
pertinent to his
convictions. His works deal mainly with the questions of co-existence (beyond
the limitations of predefined spaces), otherness and self-discovery. Often times,
they are subtle references to the socio-political issues of our times.
Another aspect of his practice
lies in project organising and artistic interventions to promote exchanges
cutting across indigenous and international platforms. To this effect he
organized the first ever photographic exchange projects between a school in France
and one in Nigeria involving the Fine Art School of Paris and Yaba College of Arts
and Technology Lagos. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of “Invisible Borders
Trans-African Photography Project”. Through Emeka Okereke Photography & Projects,
he co-ordinates projects based on exchanges. The most recent of these projects
include: Crossing Compasses, Lagos-Berlin Photo Exchange and Converging Visions:
Nigeria – Netherlands Photo Exchange
In 2003, he won the Best
Young Photographer award from the AFAA “Afrique en
Création” in the 5th
edition of the Bamako Photo Festival of photography. He has a Bachelors/Masters
degree from the National Fine Art School of Paris and has exhibited in
biennales and art festivals in different cities of the world, notably Lagos,
Bamako, Cape Town, London, Berlin, Bayreuth, Frankfurt, Nurnberg, Brussels,
Johannesburg, New York, Washington, Barcelona, Seville, Madrid, Paris, etc. He
has also won several awards both in Nigeria and Internationally.
Although he is the
artistic director of the Project, we are equally excited about
Emeka’s participation
because we believe he would draw on the strength of the
success of his past work
on the road trip, which combines elements of performance, with that of spontaneity.
Angus Mackinnon
Angus Mackinno grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa and completed
his Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts at UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape
Town, majoring in
photography
and graduating in 2013. “I grew up skateboarding and painting graffiti, which lead
to me spending a significant amount of my time on the streets and in
public
spaces of Johannesburg. Anyone who is from Johannesburg or has even visited
will be able to testify as to the extremely dynamic and polarized community
that the city produces – I believe that these experiences in this culturally
diverse and dangerous city are what lead me to engage with people and issues
like I do and ultimately to become an artist.
“Being
an artist, and in particular a photographer, allows me to engage with the world
around
me on a level which I would not otherwise be pushed to, as well as explore
and
investigate situations that I find appealing and thought-provoking. By choosing
to
work
under the title of an artist I have consciously decided to work and think in
certain
ways
as well as produce work for a particular viewing platform-whether this is
advantageous
or disadvantageous is something that I am not sure of yet but it
definitely gives
structure to my working and thinking process.”
On why he
joined for the trip, he says, “My motivation for the road trip is to find a way
of presenting modern Africa to the rest of the world. The challenge in this is
to first identify what I, myself, understand as ‘African’. The historical
conditions of colonialism and the current stereotypes that dominate African
identity allow a lot of space for this investigation.
“For the
road trip, I plan on grappling with my identity as a white African; how this is
interpreted and what it means. The geographical juxtaposition from the beginning
of the trip in Africa to the end in Europe allows for compelling engagement
with the vestiges of colonialism and an opportunity to examine it from within. I expect the trip to be filled with
incredibly interesting, eye-opening, informative, engaging, exhausting, long,
short, energizing, rewarding, tolling, character-building, connection-creating,
experience-making situations and a whole lot of photograph-taking. As a young
artist I am aware that there is an enormous amount for me to learn in terms of
my own practice; I expect to run into a range of challenges on the trip but
also expect to learn invaluable lessons and skills while rising to them. It’s
an opportunity of a lifetime.”
Dawit
L. Petro
Dawit Petros is an artist from Eritrea by way of Canada and New
York.
His mixed media
installations are rooted in photography but engage liberally with
the language of sculpture,
performance, and painting, and he works with ideas of
displacement,
place-making, and cultural negotiation. His projects have been
mapping African immigrant
spaces in an array of localities around the world –
Addis Ababa, Nairobi,
Dakar, Sao Paolo, and Harlem – while bringing into a critical
light the numerous borders
both visible and invisible that these communities
cross.
Dawit's works have
exhibited at museums and galleries across the US, Canada, Africa and China,
including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Museum of African Art, DC;
Studio Museum, Harlem; Royal Ontario Museum, Canada; Addis Foto Fest, Ethiopia,
and Dak'Art Biennale, Senegal. He was selected for the Whitney Independent Study
Program and is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, residencies and speaker
at a number of lectures.
Everyone is interested in
how Dawit's formalist approach may rupture or add new
dimensions to the spontaneity
they have so far embraced on the road trip.
Dawit
Says: "In my practice, art has never been only about the production of
objects but an invaluable means with which to restructure relationships between
objects, ideas and the larger world itself. The objectives of the road trip are
closely focused upon the building of spaces and events through which a
reconsideration of broader political, social and economical forces of
globalization and the movement of people, ideas, images and sounds that
accompany it can occur.
“I am honoured to be a participant in the 5th edition
of the The Invisible Borders Trans- African as it enacts narratives of mobility
across the African and European continents. As an east African with ties to Europe, Africa
and North America; the project represents a unique opportunity to connect
transborder movements between Africa to Europe to global migrancy from East to
Western Europe, South to North America. Secondly, the act of making art work
with the Invisible Borders art laboratory will provide a structure to better
understand the alternate meanings that artistic and cultural production acquire
as they travel and migrate through boundaries of national or ethnic belonging.
The meaning of the work we make will be continuously under evaluation and
revision as we shift from site to site and engage with new realities. Lastly,
and perhaps, more importantly, I embrace the chance to engage the numerous
localities and people that we will meet from the position of the stranger and
the unpredictable outcomes that these encounters will have to alter fixed points
of view-both our own and those of others.”
Heba Amin
Heba Amin, an Egyptian
artist and scholar currently based in Berlin. She works
primarily with film and
video, with an emphasis on new media art and architectural theory. She has
exhibited in corners far and wide, including the United States of America,
Egypt, Germany, UK, Poland, Greece, Austria, Australia, Georgia, South Korea,
Mongolia and Slovenia.
She has won numerous awards
and scholarships, including the DAAD Stipendium, Berlin and Rhizome Commissions
Program, New York, and has participated in conferences in Germany, Egypt, the
US, Italy, Greece, and Latvia. Heba has also spent months living with Bedouin
tribes in Egypt, and has also participated in world class residencies and exhibitions.
Expectedly, her work on
the road trip would bring to fore her work in digital technology and archiving
as manifest by her Project Speak2Tweet, which mashed up Speak2Tweet messages from
the period before Mubarak's fall with footage of abandoned structures leftover from
the corrupt dictatorship.
Heba Says: "A
by-product of my colonized ancestors, I had a Western education in
Egypt, I continued my
university studies abroad and learned to function between languages, between
cultures, and between ideologies. My artwork provides a much needed diversification
of a discourse in a region that is dominated by a Western
narrative abroad. As such,
I see it as my role to relay something intimate, something
personal and something
human through my own experience as someone who is able
to negotiate the terrain
of often clashing cultures.
In her words: “My artwork
addresses themes related to urbanism and technology and investigates the impact of
infrastructure on the human psyche through
junctures, glitches and flawed memory. I work with various media and am
particularly interested in portraying the impact of our built environment and
technological progress on mobility, movement and our collective emotional
state.
“As landscapes
change, as cities get more and more connected via technology and as our
politics become intertwined, this road trip represents, for me, a much needed
dialogue and exchange about the failures of globalization. To move through the
“borders” of Africa and Europe is to face the demarcations of contemporary
bureaucracies. I
am very excited to embark on the adventure and physicality of a 5-month road
trip. While the experience will surely test my limits, I am interested in how
the trip will allow me to personally confront the serious political and social
issues of borders and migration and the ways in which we are all affected by
these topics.”
Emmanuel Iduma’s novel, Farad, was published in Nigeria in 2012
(Parresia) to wide
acclaim. He is co-founder of Saraba Magazine, editor of 3bute.com,
and Director of Research & Concept Development of Invisible Borders. He is co-editor
of the forthcoming anthology of interviews and short stories Gambit: Newer African
Writing (The Mantle/McNally Jackson).
In 2011 and 2012, he was
in-house writer/blogger for the Invisible Borders Trans-African road trip from
Lagos to Addis Ababa and Libreville respectively. He was
longlisted for the Kwani? Manuscript Prize in 2013.
Iduma’s recent writings show his attempt to become more generous
and honest in his writing about art from Africa. We are interested in how he would
further promote the ideas that he began to explore during the last two editions
of the road trip.
“When I
write anything, I imagine I’m making an object. This notion affords me two
things: one, I can think of myself as an artisan, and two the object I make can
be viewed, played with, disrupted, and even loved. How does this connect with
this year’s road trip? Well, it means that while on the road I will carry about
this object I’m making, allowing people to touch and feel it. I want to be
generous with my writing—and generosity implies honesty, and a clear form of
criticality. I want this object I’m making to possess utility, to be important.
And because I’ll be writing about art production on the continent, I’ll like to
begin with the idea that I’m in conversation with the everyday, with the
everyday artist and the everyday street-person. I wouldn’t want to be a
specialist. Above all, if you ask me the shape of this object I’m making, I’ll
say it has three sides: justice, love and happiness. How can I write about art
in a way that enunciates and translates these virtues? That’s what I’m going to
be finding out.”
Renee Mboya
In December 2013, a few days before he received final confirmation of his
participation in the 2014 Invisible Borders Road Trip, Renee Mboya said he sat down across a table from the woman who
would a day later become his landlady.
“She asked me what I did, "I'm a writer" I said, responding
definitely for the first time in a long time. She said that she was a Jehovah's
Witness. I almost passed out. This moment, significant for what it exposed of
me, will be the pivot from which I look at the world as we travel this year. I
hope to explore the environments that manufacture prejudice – that have made my
own prejudices - the separations that we create amongst ourselves, the real and
artificial constructions of culture and the specific difficulty of navigating
the world as a third culture kid.
“I want to
explore the contexts of language and location - the containers of history,
politics and economics as they exist traditionally in textiles, music, artefact
and food, for example, and examine their place in a multimedia modernity, and
their revalorisation in contemporary culture through fashion, television and
myth against the backdrop of post-colonialism and post-imperialism and newly
contracted perspectives influence lines of perception at first instance.
I think
movement, my own and those of others (the others), as the only truly
trans-historical aspect, will give me unique insight into the ways of the world
and I look forward to examining the exceptional ways in which my writing will
learn to complete itself in motion.
Mboya, a writer from Kenya who works in fiction and
narrative nonfiction, has published work in Art Life Magazine, East African
Standard Newspaper, Kwani?, and others. She worked as Programs & Marketing
Officer for Kuona Trust Centre,
and
in curatorial, editorial, and project management for Gallery Watatu, Kwani
Trust,
and Generation Kenya. Her sharp writing has a gritty honesty and fearless
approach
in the telling of realities. Along with multi-faceted experience and
sharp
talent, Renee brings a sense of adventure that embodies a straightforward
urgency,
yet temperance and vision. Her voice is clear, sharp and generous. Without
doubt,
participating on the road trip would strengthen her work, which she considers
to
be
that of an archivist and documentarian of the experiences of her generation.
She
says, "I feel a responsibility through my craft to collect the very
significant shifts
that
are occurring in creed and culture at this time of seismic change in the ways
in
which people
interact."
Tom Saater is a social
documentary photographer and documentary filmmaker/
Cinematographer
from Nigeria. He focuses on social and cultural issues, humanity and
development, reportage, urban portraits and other diverse topics.
He
has been Working as a freelance photographer for almost a decade photographing
and filming for international organisations and NGOs.
In December 2009, he was invited by the
British Council to participate in a photography project called “My Home is
Here.” The project involved travelling around Nigeria to produce images of
Climate Change in Nigeria and, as part of this project, he
won
a Canon 5D Mk II camera and was selected to travel to Ethiopia to exhibit at
the 2010 Addis Foto Festival in Ethiopia.
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