Nigerian Art in Venice: That Zersplitterte Utopia

Critical Nigeria presents itself at the Art Biennale in Venice. What image does the land represent itself?

Voices from Lagos: Precious Okoyomon’s Installation “Pre-Sky/Emit Light: Yes Like That” in the Nigerian Pavilion in Venice Photo: Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia

Verträumt mischt sich der Klang Hunderter smaller Glocken with dem Rascheln von Gras and Blättern in Wind. This stimulates the stimulation of the movement sensors since.

As von Pflanzen, an umschlungener Sendeturm steht the Installation “Pre-Sky/ Emit Light: Yes Like That” by the Nigerian-American artist Precious Okoyomon in the Innenhof a Palazzos from the 16. Jahrhundert in Venedig. Dort präsentiert sich Nigeria nor until the end of November at the age of 60. Art Biennale, on 2015, is a place with its own country pavilion.

The Australian national office, first organized in Benin City, founded the Museum of West African Art (MoWAA). People are probably familiar with the representations of his colored, flat building, designed by internationally celebrated but now MeToo symbols against Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, who was pulled back from the light of disaster.

The new MoWAA in the Bundesstaat will remain in the restitution debate longer than your house, in Nigeria the Benin Bronze status will be taken over – until he has his president Muhammadu Buhari has let fade, who will have developed world-wide marketable objects in collections. And the Oba, as the successor to the last created royal houses of Benin, had for him a museum of his own.

Kein Platz for cultural political unstimmigkeiten

The cultural political unrest in Nigeria is played out in the history of the game. Denn Aindrea Emelife, the Curator for contemporary art at the Zukünftigen MoWAA, lays out with his program “Nigeria Imaginary” a self-invented way out of the lands of this country.

Eight artists living in the Diaspora have been loaded. The greater part of my life is a prominent place in the international art world. If all the mittes of the image of a Nigeria, that is one of the British colonies of 1960, are political and economic, it is a fact that the cultural world has received an enormous boost. The Biennale is a political with the Mitteln der Kunst.

Okoyomon, born in 1993 in London, born during the war and in his life in Nigeria, lived for the sound installation in the Court of the Palazzos unterschedlichsten Menschen on the Streets of Lagos dieselben zehn Gestellt. Etwa “Beschreiben Sie einen Morgen, an dem Sie ohne Angst aufgewacht sind” or “Was hat das Leiden Ihrer Mutter verursacht?” Sachte schallen nun in Venedig die, Albträume und alltäglichen Gewalterfahrungen in Nigeria op de Biennalebesucher:innen, aber auch Träume und Wünsche.

If you don’t know what’s going on, would you please wait a little longer, then the okoyomon will come into battle with the Ausstellungseröffnung. ‘It’s an energy revolution, that goes through the city. Who is a standard vibration, a Urangst.’ If it is a tragedy of a ‘zersplittertes Nigeria’ in that case, then the muttering in the US is aufwuchs, but jeden Sommer bei ihrem in Lagos verbracht.

The bells were restored in Benin City, the territory of the various fork-colonial kings of Benin, the Reichtum is a zeitweilig itself from trade with the European speiste: “The sound brings back memories.”

Erinnerungen and the Biafran War

Whoever connects personal experiences with the Trauer over the Geschichte des Landes, says about the installation “Ilé Oriaku (House of Abundance) by Toyin Ojih Odutola. The artist, born in 1985 in Nigerian Ilé-Ifè, in California and Alabama, grew up and today in New York, could start with my more shyly with black ballpoint pen marked figures. The background is not so big, so the highest point is where the image hangs.

In the palace Odutola has lifted her paintings into backlit glass cabinets. As the glass was moved, the eye fell on the personal attention of the artist and his brief representation of large quantities. The other woman, an Igbo, the Bevolkerungsgruppe Nigerias, died in 1967 in the Nigerian civil war, placed in a Mbari-Haus.

The tradition dies after a ritual of distribution in the countryside, the attacks of Bauten are the British colonial government and the persecutions of the Biafran wars lost. If you take a picture of the power over the house of Mbari, this is a utopia. “I’m getting me my homeland in my work. That’s Nigeria, in which I could live”, said the artist.

Regarding the current situation of fraud or the fundamental anti-LGBTQ policy in Nigeria, it may happen that queer life Künstlerin is no longer used. Während der Arbeit an de Bildern hörte sie veld Nigerian Highlife-Musik aus der Zeit, als zijn Großmutter a young Frau war, in de Zeit der Post-Unabhängkeit der 1960, als in Land Kurz Aufbruchstimmung herrschte.

Restitution of the Benin Bronze

With the message “Monument for the Restoration of the Mind and the Soul” (Denkmal zur Wiedergutmachung von Verstand und Seele) greift der 1962 born in London, Nigerian-British Künstler Yinka Shonibaret die Discussion um die Restitution der fouten Tausend 1897 von de Britten geraubten Benin -Bronze op.

Who likes to see the art grievance of the expedition and: a story of historical bronze lies is by the many images. The copy machine is the great escape for the „Punish expedition“ in Benin and trains the officials Sir Harry Rawson. In a display case, “analogous to the art, which were taken from their ritual contexts”, so of art in the conversation.

Rawsons Bust is, who his Shonibares sculptures are high-quality, with the most vermaintliche traditional West African textile textile. The wax impressions were made in the colonial period after the Indonesian fabric in the Netherlands (he was the textile production produced in China) and found in West Africa one of the best results.

“Viele Menschen did not understand, because the current problems of Nigeria resulted from the colonial inheritance of unterdrückung kommen”, thus Shonibare. “They have lived their lives in the psyche.”