Nigeria Imaginary: A Journey Through Nigeria’s Past and Hopes for the Future

At the 60th Edition of La Biennale di Venezia, Nigeria’s second pavilion presented “a restless investigation of the legacies of the colonial past and a defiant imagining of a hopeful, youth-driven future”.

The much-anticipated Nigerian pavilion, Nigeria Imaginary, is a dynamic showcase featuring revered contemporary Nigerian artists: Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Ndidi Dike, Onyeka Igwe, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Abraham Oghobase, Precious Okoyomon, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, and Fatimah Tuggar, who expanded their practices in scale and materiality to explore moments of history, nostalgic moods, and visions of a Nigeria that is yet to be. 

As the pavilion curator, Aindrea Emelife, noted, “Nigeria Imaginary comes from two points of departure. It explores the role of great moments in Nigeria’s history: moments of optimism and the Nigeria that lives in our minds, a Nigeria that could be and is yet to be. In an attempt to imagine Nigeria in the future, Nigeria Imaginary presents a multitude of ideas, memories, and nostalgia for the country. Employing an intergenerational and, at times, a diasporic lens, the works across mediums function like points in a manifesto.”   

The pavilion's 16th-century “Palazzo Canal” offers a unique departure from the Arsenale, taking visitors on a journey through the notoriously treacherous cobblestone alleys and scenic canals to a present-day interpretation of Mbari Club. A center for cultural activity in Nigeria, founded in Ibadan in 1961 by Ulli Beier, it sought to be a “laboratory for ideas” and space for creative exploration, brought to life by the first work encountered. 

A living installation in the courtyard by mixed-media artist, poet, and chef Precious Okoyomon, who was featured in the 2022 International Exhibition The Milk of Dreams, envelops you with a sound design by the avant-garde music collective Standing on the Corner as you walk down the bright green corridor, representing the Nigerian flag. Re-Sky/Emit Light: Yes, Like That (2024) features a gleaming orb radio tower reflecting the surrounding brick and foliage, which will wildly outgrow the courtyard overtime, delicately strung bells that react to the environmental impact of the wind, rain, and atmosphere, and an electronic synthesizer reconfiguring the sounds of Venice. This environmental music is intertwined with broadcasted words of select Nigerian poets, artists, and writers providing a meditative pause in daily realities, encouraging “a moment of collective cultural thinking.”  

The central hub of the pavilion highlights The Nigeria Imaginary Incubator Project, a traveling research project curated by Emelife and presented by The Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), ART X Lagos, and EdoIFest in Benin in 2023. In the Venice presentation, respondents' answers to questions such as “What does Nigeria taste like?”, “What song reminds you of your grandmother?”, “What does Nigeria look like in 2050?” and more were etched on glass displays showcasing memorabilia including Uche Okeke's Drawings, Drum and Nigeria  Magazines, Black Orpheus and more. This hub encourages exploration into the interwoven stories of Nigeria’s past and actions in the present flowing through the exhibition. 

In Celestial Gathering, (2024), Tunji Adeniyi-Jones’s style of fluid, vibrant abstract figures danced on the ceiling like a flame, blending the tradition of Venetian ceiling ornamentation with foliage alluding to Nigerian literature and art historical references from traditional Yoruba sculpture to the fluid modernism of Ben Enwonwu. The painting “evokes a sense of exploration, transition, and potential; three ideas inextricably tied to the state of things in Nigeria.”  

Ndidi Dike’s works provide powerfully poetic commentary on the Nigerian End SARS uprising and how it “intersects with global movements against police corruption and brutality, such as the Black Lives Matter movements across the African diaspora”. The towering sculpture Blackhood: A Living Archive, (2024) comprised of a large powder-coated steel frame, wooden police batons, acrylic paint, paper tags, and rope  is a confrontation, call to action, and memorial of hope against the violent actions of police which caused these movements and the response to it. The batons, which were in effect during Nigeria’s colonial and post-colonial era, nestled in the structure have a heavier weight added from the dangling brown paper cadaver tags inscribed with the names of recently deceased Nigerians, African Americans, and Afro-Brazilians. The artist’s photo-based installation incorporating images taken by Ndidi Dike and collaborators Kelechi Amadi-Obi and Nyancho NwaNri, Bearing Witness: Optimism In A Disquiet Present, (2024) highlights the activist in the streets during the movement and the importance of civil resistance against the systemic injustice wrought upon Black people around the world. 

Tucked away in the home theater, Onyeka Igwe invites you to enter the dark room and question, “where does the hangover of coloniality end?” In Igwe’s, No archive can restore this chorus of (diasporic) shame, 2024 gives the viewers a tour of what has been left behind from the British state-run Colonial Film Unit Studio and the content of the films produced. Dusty floors, deteriorated scripts, rusted film canisters, and tattered film strips strewn about. As stated by the artist, “The films housed in this building are hard to see because of their condition, but also perhaps because people do not want to see them. They reveal a colonial residue that is echoed in walls of the building itself.” These films take inspiration from the inaugural address of Nnamdi Azikiwe, a former president of Nigeria, and its history of protest, conflict, and rebellion from colonial times to the present day; utilizing sounds from the artist five year audio collection, the Aba Women's Rebellion and more created in collaboration with British-Rwandan music and sound artist/composer Auclair to inspire a different gaze on the history and future of the nation. 

Toyin Ojih Odutola presented a collection of illuminated drawings made with ballpoint pens, pencils, pastels, and charcoal collectively titled Lé Oriaku (House of Abundance) 2024 which lend a dream-like use of the Mbari house as a metaphor. Sacred homes constructed as a propitiatory rite filled with figures from mythology and everyday life, such as automobiles and radios  built into the structures, Mbari houses are representations of abundance, community, healing and harmony created at times of peace and stability. A view manifested in Ojih Odutola’s complex voyeuristic storytelling of a communities daily life envisioned in the exhibition. 

Walking into Yinka Shonibare CBE RA’s installation Monument To The Restitution Of The Mind And Soul, (2023) feels like a journey through time with each level of the amassing pyramid spelling out the intricate history of Nigeria’s artistic production. Perhaps representing the strongest stylistic departure from the artist in the pavillion, Shonibare CBE RA “imagines a future where the majestic, historic artworks that were looted by British forces from the Kingdom of Benin are displayed not as trophies of a lost, immutable past but as testaments to sophistication and ever-changing artistic innovation.” This piece is a timely statement, as conversations and criticisms on the British Museum and other institutions unethical acquisition and continued ownership of meaningful cultural contributions from Nigeria, and culturally significant works from across the globe have intensified over the years. A particularly important addition to this work is a vetrine encapsulated bust of Sir Harry Rawson, who led the Benin Expedition of 1897, painted in Shonibare CBE RA’s signature Batik style pattern, as the faces behind these actions too often goes unnoticed.

Fatimah Tuggars’s Light Cream Pods (Excerpt), (2024)  featured framed indigenous instruments and animatronic calabashes fluttering like dragonflies and bees balancing on a flower, bringing to light the disappearance of Nigerian artisans and a hopeful future of “cultural hybridity” bridging traditional craftsmanship with Artificial Intelligence/Augmented Reality (AI/AR) innovation. This work is also a note on how “colonization and globalization have increased the negation of indigenous craft and the escalation of environmental assault.” Working at the BintaZarah Studios with several artisan crafts persons, research scholars, facilitators, technologists, translators, scientists, hackers, jammers, creative talent, and volunteers Tuggar created an invitation to meld indigenous technologies with contemporary computing and artistic strategies, “bridging actual spaces and imaginary places”, and highlighting music and indigenous instruments, such as the calabash as a signifier and container for ideas of environmental equity in a time of global deconstruction.

In his work Life Of Mine: Schematic Ii - 07, (2024) and Life Of Mine: Schematic Ii - 08, (2024) Abraham Onoriode Oghobase created a series of digital collages utilizing  monochromatic prints from a Rand Metallurgical Practice manual and silhouettes of archival imagery showcasing what was lost at the height of the extractive industries power. Presented in the style of source material from the library, to welcome visitors to investigate the ecological and economic impact of mining and how remnants of Nigeria's colonial past are still interwoven in conversations today. A note punctuated by the inclusion of images of Africa's land and people from the Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs taken from 1860-1960 along the perimeter of the room, which Oghobase degraded and eroded through repetitive photocopying, to encourage a re-examination of how the landscape imagery has been used to sell land and contributes to the continued exploitation of the land and its inhabitants. 

The pavilion is open to the public until November 24th in Venice, Italy and an expanded presentation of the exhibition, also curated by Emelife, will travel to the Museum of West African Art as the inaugural exhibition in the new contemporary art space in the MOWAA Creative Campus in Benin City, Nigeria.