A Walk
As I walked in Maiduguri, Lagos and Abuja I saw my body as a porous tool where all sorts of multi-sensory information could be gathered. Entanglements with unfolding landscapes before me and “found things” that could be the sound of birds, video of neatly cut lawn grass, it could be torn photographs, discarded lace material, a stick or a leaf.
I first began to ideate “walking” as a narrative, when I began research about the rising incident of female suicide bombers in North eastern Nigeria. I felt a void in linear photographic language to capture these horrific incidents. What emerged from my exploring this subject through walking was a holistic narrative that placed my own body at the centre and a slow-moving deconstruction of my photography process in a very conceptual manner.
“A Walk” charts my experience with the urban environment that surrounds me. With each step posing questions about the experience of a female body and mobility in urban areas, and the growth ways of flora as it is influenced by the urban environment. A Walk is banal everyday routine and it is also a sort of visual resistance and exploration of visual language.
As I walk as an artistic practice, I am taken by the idea of a vast circulatory system within and around me that I’m connected to, using the motifs of mapping, journeying, growth and nature I try to make sense of these new connections I’m making. As I “Walk” I think about how I can mend a rupture, stitch a gash, and put the pieces back together of something, perhaps a body fragmented in the landscape.
2018 - In progress.
Photographs, collages, sound, video, sculpture, installations
The project was supported by an Open Society Foundation Moving Walls grant in 2018-2019
