Invisible Borders relieves experience while in Saravejo

By ADA DIKE

After four months they departed from Nigeria, some of the members of the Trans-African Photographic Initiative, also known as Invisible Borders, that set out to visit Saravejo by road, have reached the city safely.

A team of about Nine Africans departed Lagos in June 2014, travelling through 20 countries by road aimed to tell stories about Africa through photography.

The leader of the team, Mr. Emeka Okereke, said that more than seven Africans from Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Eritrea and Kenya, among others embarked 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.

Though faced with different challenges, they were determined to complete their trip, but less than four people were able to make it to Saravejo.

With help from their wonderful supporters they managed to raise $6,253 to fund the road trip – “a great achievement and we thank everyone who has made this possible.”

In a happy mood, they share their experience online and stated that:  

“Our final morning in Sarajevo! We were warmly received by everyone we met, and inspired by the encounters we had to do meaningful work. Thanks to all our Sarajevo-friends who hosted us in their homes, offices, and on the street! Thanks for the food, laughter, genuine questions, information, books, directions, etc. Priceless thank you to Sabina Husičić, Nina Durakovic, Aida Hajro, Betânia Ramos Schröder, and of course Jude Anogwih. You made the final city of the road trip remarkable & unforgettable.

“…Sarajevo is a long way away and before we had to sell our anti-malarial pills we had to travel through Senegal, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Croatia having already come over 2000 kilometers through Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali.”

After 120 days on the road, most participants of the Invisible Borders’ road trip dropped off in Amsterdam as they are not able to continue due to varied personal reasons. However, the project continued all the way to Sarajevo with the few remaining participants.

“We were determined to reach the end of the project as this has been such an enriching experience. We have been very much inspired by all the life-changing encounters on the way.
“When we set off on this road trip in the beginning of June, we had no idea how far we could stretch ourselves to become an embodiment of this utopia. All we had was the curiosity and the determination to actualize our dreams. Today, we made it this far with profound experiences to account for it. It has not been easy and we cannot claim that we met headlong with all the challenges. But what we can say for sure is that we have taken this idea out of the realm of fantasies and into a tangibility that allows for broader conversations around the topic of borders especially within the relationship between Africa and Europe.
“Since arriving in Europe, we have created works in Malaga, made professional encounters in Madrid, explored El Raval - the vibrant immigrants district of Barcelona, experienced museums and art Centres of Paris, followed by exhibitions and presentations in Amsterdam, Cologne and Berlin,” they stated.

Names of the members that initially embarked on the journey are:

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.

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.

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.

Emmanuel Iduma

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.

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.

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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.

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.