What lies beneath these student’s present memory of current events? What memories are being erased by the news reports being written about them?
It was with these questions that I went back to a school I had visited before. Shehu Sanda Kyarimi government school of about 2800 students in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria. On March 18, 2013 six Boko Haram gunmen entered the school killing and injuring students. That was what the article I had written said.
I engaged about ten girls to collaborate on an improvisational series. I was looking for natural gestures, expressions, and movement, something beyond the coldness of the frame and beyond the framework of a story. What stories, folktales, fairytales did they remember being told as little children? What games were passed to them in the playgrounds?
Tatsuniya for me is “Warmth work” in a Beauysian sense, where through our collaborations and interrelationships new narratives are formed and a tangible warmth “sculpture” is made from our interconnectedness.
It’s a shifting exploration of the spatial relationships between our gazes and an exercise in excavation, preservation and improvisation. Where would we go? What would we do together?
Tatsuniya is a conceptual continuation of the Education is forbidden project.
- Tatsuniya, 2017 - ongoing Still images, video, installation
Please request for full portfolio
Title: “Playing Slowly” Series: Tatsuniya (2017) Dimensions: 68.5 cm x 101.5 cm Not Editioned Materials: Digital print on archival paper
Title: Ruth, Amina, and the three Aisha’s play “In and Out” Series: Tatsuniya (2017) Dimensions: 68.5 cm x 101.5 cm Edition of 7 Materials: Digital print on archival paper Availability: Enquire with Red Hook Labs, NY https://www.artsy.net/artist/rahima-gambo
Title “Experience” Series: Tatsuniya (2017) Dimensions: 68.5 cm x 101.5 cm Not Editioned Materials: Digital print on archival paper
Title: school girls crossing river (2) Series: Tatsuniya (2017) Dimensions: 68.5 cm x 101.5 cm Edition of 7 Materials: Digital print on archival paper Availability: Enquire with Red Hook Labs, NY https://www.artsy.net/artist/rahima-gambo
Title: “Holiday is Coming.” Series: Tatsuniya (2017) Dimensions: 68.5 cm x 101.5 cm Not Editioned Materials: Digital print on archival paper
Title: School girls with candles (1) Series: Tatsuniya (2017) Dimensions: 68.5 cm x 101.5 cm Edition of 7 Materials: Digital print on archival paper Availability: Enquire with Red Hook Labs, NY https://www.artsy.net/artist/rahima-gambo
Still from “Tatsuniya” video installation at Treehouse, Lagos (2017) Projected on white wall within a room filled with soil and 45 palm trees. Duration of video: 7 minutes Video trailer: https://vimeo.com/357965024
Title: “Tatsuniya” Part 1 Trailer (2017) Duration of video: 7 minutes
This film about student memory in schools in northeast Nigeria explores the relationship between text, audio, moving and still images. It takes place in Shehu Sanda Kyarimi school, Maiduguri featuring current students of the school. The school was attacked by Boko Haram in 2013. As students remember their experiences living at the forefront of the Boko Haram conflict, their stories often sound like a dark folktale somewhere between the real and the imagined. The video in its non- linear and disjointed sequence mimics the sonic and visual rhythms of this collective memory and touches upon themes of youthfulness, innocence and play. “Tatsuniya” means a fable, short story or riddle in the Hausa language.
Still from “Tatsuniya” video installation at Treehouse, Lagos (2017) Projected on white wall within a room filled with soil and 45 palm trees. Duration of video: 7 minutes Video trailer: https://vimeo.com/357965024
Still from “Tatsuniya” video installation at Treehouse, Lagos (2017) Projected on white wall within a room filled with soil and 45 palm trees. Duration of video: 7 minutes Video trailer: https://vimeo.com/357965024
Title: “Goodbye students” Series: Tatsuniya (2017) Dimensions: 68.5 cm x 101.5 cm Not Editioned Materials: Digital print on archival paper
Installation shot of Tatsuniya at Red Hook labs and Nataal: New African Photography III group exhibition, Brooklyn, NY, 2018
Installation shot of Tatsuniya at Red Hook labs and Nataal: New African Photography III group exhibition, Brooklyn, NY, 2018
Rahima Gambo
Rahima Gambo is a Nigerian photographer and artist.