Past

Sights and Sounds: Nigeria

May 1 – May 28, 2015

Sights and Sounds: Nigeria features new work by Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Uche Okpa-Iroha, Mudi Yahaya, and Emeka Ogboh, selected by Jude Anogwih.

A lot has occurred in the realm of cinematic and televisual media in Nigeria since the earliest recorded film screenings took place on August 12, 1903, in Lagos. From the propagandistic Bantu Educational Kinema Experiments (BEKE) of the mid-1930s to the enveloping influence of popular Nollywood movies today, film has provided a visual platform for urgent conversations about the self and society, especially as they relate to postcolonial Nigerian identity and the reclamation efforts of decolonialization.

Nigeria became the first African country to build a national television station in 1959. Since then, Nigerian film and video have been sites of innovation and creativity. Nigeria today is an amalgam country, constantly bombarded by global culture, politics, and aesthetics. The dramatic growth of moving-image technologies and the democratic freedom they provide have allowed filmmakers and video artists to broaden the discourse of self and the role (or the lack of it) of the individual in contemporary society. Through the Video Art Network Lagos platform, a conscious, democratic exploration and integration of video art within the wide array of artistic forms in Lagos has been initiated. More importantly, Nigerian artists are appropriating this medium in their works as painters, photographers, sculptors and so on.

The artists selected to participate in this project are Nigerians by birth or descent, living and working across the globe in Europe, the United States, and Africa. These artists, through the medium of video art, speak eloquently of the complexities of life within and beyond the continent,raising pertinent questions about the precarious and unpredictable state of our world.

Jude Anogwih
Curator
Jude Anogwih (b. Sokoto, 1975) is an artist and curator based in Lagos, Nigeria. Since 2008, he has organized several local and international projects with the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos. He is a founding member and co-coordinator of Video Art Network, Lagos (vanlagos.org). In 2009 he curated (with Oyinda Fakeye) Identity: An Imagined State at CCA, Lagos; in 2011–12 he organized (with Kerryn Greenberg) Contested Terrains at Tate Modern, London, and CCA, Lagos. Anogwih is an associate curator of the 2015 Jogja Biennale in Indonesia.

About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video

This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.

Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.

Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.

The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.

Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs

#sightsandsounds

Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.

Exhibition highlights

Wura-Natasha Ogunji, still from Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman?, 2013, video, sound, 11 min., 56 sec. Artwork © Wura-Natasha Ogunji