DÁ FALA

TAFETA is pleased to present the collective photo exhibition BEFORE, BEFORE & NOW, NOW that opens on the 19th of March at 4pm at MIRA FORUM in Porto, Portugal.

This photography exhibition, firstly shown in 2014 at Bohams in London, celebrates the Nigerian history through photographers that have documented and reflected on its peoples, events and transformation into the country that we know it as today. Nigeria, as a nation state emerged from a diversity of preceding kingdoms, emirates, chieftaincies and other communities via an interlude of colonization by the British. This exhibition contrasts artworks by contemporary Nigerian photographers with a selection of works by their Nigerian predecessors (by descent or permanent settlement) produced at significant periods in Nigeria’s formation.

The exhibition invites the viewer to consider the “before” and the “now” – the similarities and differences in technology, in events, individuals and landscapes, and in the particular ways of seeing as each photographer constructs an imagery about their land. These photographers offer diverse and original visions of Nigeria and the rest of the world. Their images are the product, or rather distillation, of specifically Nigerian sensibilities shaped by the cultural, social and ecological experiences of living in the country. They articulate the “now” of Nigeria with its energy and dynamism and its contrasts of individuals, communities and landscapes. At the same time they look to the future with its new possibilities in an ever more inter-connected world. The other end of the spectrum is the “before”, whether in the years leading up to Nigeria’s formation or at independence when the right to self-determination was finally wrested from the departing British.

Participant Photographers: Adeola Olagunju, Adolphus Opara, Aisha Augie-Kuta, Akintunde Akinleye, Amaize Ojeikere, Andrew Esiebo, Emeka Okereke, George Osodi, J.D. Okhai Ojeikere, Jide Alakij, Uche Okpha Iroha, Alfred Carew, Fosa Studios, J.A. Green, J.B. Abibmbola, N.W.Holm, Obafemi Luther, Olojo Studios and Sanya Freeman.

MIRA FORUM is an art gallery that fundamentally linked with photography and its relationship with other arts and knowledge. It is an interdisciplinary place that combines a social and a commercial facet, and it is considered a cultural art center due to the range of programs that it offers. Some of these include: individual and collective exhibitions, conferences, theater plays, workshops, concerts and dance performances. MIRA FORUM also emphasizes projects that involve local communities. Artistic residencies are also an important component in the intervention of Espaço MIRA and MIRA FORUM. Since October 2013, the gallery presented more than 30 exhibitions, 14 concerts, 10 workshops and 8 art residencies.

INFORMATION

BEFORE, BEFORE & NOW, NOW

At MIRA FORUM

Exhibition Opening 19 March > 4-7pm

19 March – 27 April 2016

Opening times: Tuesday/Saturday 3pm-7pm

MIRA FORUM

Rua de Miraflor 155,

4300-334, Porto, Portugal miraforum@espacomira.net (+351) 929145191/ 929113431

Contact and details about the exhibition: ines@tafeta.com | +351 918224949

Músicos com o movimento Occupy Nigeria que, muito além da questão do preço do combustível, tem denunciado a corrupção governamental.

H/T africa is a country

Not in the title / photocollage 2011

Sam Hopkins´ installation „Not in the title“ is inspired by Nigerian and Ghanaian horror movies from the collection of the Iwalewa-Haus. A selection of these movies is shown in the original version mixed with manipulated sequences that are integrated digitally. The installation asks about authenticity and searches for the reception of global artworks in a local context.

Sam Hopkins lives in Nairobi (Kenya). His art is concerned with public space and interactivity. Examples are the media collective Slum TV and Urban Mirror Nairobi.

Exhibition from 27-11-11 / 04-03-12

Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth, Germany

saiu em Paris a 4 de Abril o novo Cd do SEUN ANIKULAPO KUTI (filho do Fela Kuti) & The Egypt 80.O álbum chama-se “From Africa with Fury: RISE”.

“L’une des meilleures formations de scène du moment, l’une des plus puissantes et des plus barrées”, commente à propos de Seun Kuti et son groupe, Brian Eno, coproducteur de cet album. C’est le deuxième, pour le fils cadet de Fela, musicien d’envergure du continent noir, mort en 1997. Un disque puissant. Le passage de la scène au studio d’enregistrement ne gomme rien de l’énergie bouillonnante du garçon et de ses musiciens, qui sont, à quelques changements près, ceux de la dernière formation de son père, Egypt 80. Portée par des cuivres et des rythmes avançant en rangs serrés, la voix guerrière de Seun Kuti tire sur tout ce qui était déjà la cible de son père. Les dirigeants politiques et les multinationales en prennent pour leur grade. Le jeune chanteur et musicien (saxophone), né au Nigeria, en 1983, a le verbe vif et amène dans sa musique un irrésistible effet de transe.

Le Monde

Youngest son of Afrobeat firebrand Fela, Seun Kuti has succeeded where most celebrity offspring fail, succesfully updating his father’s musical legacy. It helps he inherited a brilliant band, Egypt 80, but Seun has added his own generational voice. On his second album, Afrobeat’s loping rhythms are tautened for the digital age, while staccato guitars and intricate horns are laced with electronica (courtesy Brian Eno among others). Seun is a gruffer, less persuasive singer than Fela, but his songs sting just as strongly. Decrying Nigeria’s plight, he sings of “Monsanto and Halliburton [which] use their food to make my people hungry”. Protest music for modern times.

Guardian

more info

O poeta, arte-educador e editor Allan da Rosa comenta a obra de Wole Soyinka, poeta e dramaturgo nigeriano que foi o primeiro escritor africano a ganhar o prêmio Nobel de literatura, em 1986.

An international conference on Nollywood will be holding at the School of Media and Communication from July 21-24, 2011. The conference tagged Nollywood in Africa, Africa in Nollywood will be convened by Prof. Emevwo Biakolo - Dean School of Media and Communication, Pan-African University, Nigeria and Prof. Onookome Okome-University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

There has been a boom in the scholarship of Nollywood lately, so that it is now appropriate to speak of an intellectual niche that we may, for want of a better phrase, refer to as “Nollywood Studies.” As part of its template, this area of African Studies is concerned with the cultural product, the Nollywood film. There are also aspects dealing with production style, distribution, exhibition and financing, which the Nollywood industry inaugurated so quickly and spontaneously. Indeed, a body of mythologies has congealed around the way Nollywood makes its film. One documentary film after the other rehashes these mythologies ad infinitum. One remarkable feature of Nollywood as African’s “dream factory” is that it came into life and has lived its life without the express support of any Government or other institutional means. However, understanding the popularity that Nollywood enjoys across the African continent and its diasporas is a complex matter. Nollywood was able to achieve and sustain this popularity because it has managed to find new ways of migrating in and outside Africa without let or hindrance. Yet, its growth and unprecedented popularity as Africa’s “popular cinema” did not happen without peculiar challenges for the producers. In the early days, Nollywood was vilified in the as the art of idiots and some even vented to called it the “peddler’s art” in the same way that Hollywood was vilified in the 1890s. Even today, not everyone is happy about what it reads as local cultures. Many still regard it as “fake art.” Some still describe it as “infantile” in the ways it reads, makes and circulates culture. Inattentive to what the cultural brouhaha is all about, Nollywood producers have gone on to do what they know how to do best: produce more Nollywood films for their captive audiences across African and in the black diasporas.

The Conference has two goals. It seeks to rephrase the significance of Nollywood as a popular vehicle for the production of culture and the provision of a systematic way of reading the Nollywood film (and Industry) as Popular arts.

To answer these questions, the convener solicits abstracts that deal with:

• The Production and circulation of culture in Nollywood

• Nollywood in Africa and the African Diasporas

• Nollywood’s Africa and the representations of Africa in Nollywood

• The audience of Nollywood

• Women in/of Nollywood

• Transgressive and un-cultural Nollywood

• Sexualities and preference in Nollywood films

• Exhibition, financing and distribution in Nollywood

• The internet and Nollywood

• Nollywood and the development of national cinemas in Africa

• Nollywood in the world 

Invited speakers include Prof. Karin Barber (University of Birmingham, UK), Prof. John Haynes (Broklyn College, Long Island University, New York), Prof. John MacCall (University Southern Illinois, US) and Prof. Dr. Till Forster (University of Basel, Switzerland).

Abstracts and inquries should be sent by email not later than June 30, 2011 and clearly marked, “Nollywood in Africa Conference” on the subject line of the email to:

Anuli Agina - aagina@smc.edu.ng (Tel) 234(0)7032237197

Ijeoma Nwezeh - inwezeh@smc.edu.ng (Tel) 234(0)8028494293

Vivian Ojiyovwi Adeoti- vadeoti@smc.edu.ng

Nasceu em Kano, Nigeria em 1974. É artista visual e performer. O seu trabalho está exposto na 29a Bienal de São Paulo, Brasil.