N
IGER DELTA FLOW:
NEW WORKS BY ZINA SARO-WIWA

25th April till 6th June 2015

Boys’ Quarters Project Space is delighted to present Niger Delta Flow: New Video and Installation Works by Zina Saro-Wiwa. This is Boys’ Quarters fourth exhibition and features new video works made by Zina Saro-Wiwa in the Niger Delta. The show is an opportunity to share with her community the works she is in the Niger Delta creating that are destined for museums in the United States. It gives us a taste of her practice which is concerned with the dynamics of self and environment, the relationship between the personal and the political as well as the role of performance in everyday rituals.

Zina is animated by the question of the Niger Delta identity, which she feels is consumed by the war around oil. “I find this identity limiting and not remotely generative. I am interesting in exploring other environmentalisms through invoking and exposing our own customs and practices and allowing them to do the talking for the region.”

As you walk into the first gallery you are confronted by two pieces: a fibre installation titled “Mine” and a video provisionally titled “Niger Delta: A Documentary”. The film is a looped video that was shot at a beachfront in Ogoniland. A red plastic chair sits, apparently unoccupied, with the Omo river flowing behind it. The scene seems to be a still life but in reality it is anything but.

“I made this piece by accident. I was preparing for a photographic shoot but the moment captivated me and I felt inspired to film the scene in front of me. When I watched it at home I saw that there was so much life going on in this tranquil scene. There are crabs, there is water and then there is quiet drama of the boatman carrying a load of sand downstream. I also love the intensity of the colour blocking. Five sites: sand, river, mangrove, sky and chair with an individual identity and ongoing narratives of their own working together.”

The work highlights the bucolic aspects of Niger Delta life and identity. Often talked about in terms of its ecological demise, the peace of the Niger Delta rarely has a chance to be a dominant narrative and this film allows this very active peace as well as other voices: the voices of the river, the wind, the crabs to take centre stage in the theatre of the region. The video also comments on the juxtaposition of the natural with the synthetic and plays with the idea of absence and presence.

The fibre piece, entitled “Mine” (2015) is made of wool. Originally made in just red, Mine is an expression of possession. It depicts energy flow and the inhabiting of an environment or space. It speaks of connections and ties that bind. Red wool in Ogoni culture is worn in the hair of women that have just given birth. Indeed some women choose to wear red from head-to-toe. For Saro-Wiwa it is a symbol of rebirth. In addition the function of thread is to bind and connect. For this reason she felt it an apt material to express herself in relation to the space at Aggrey Road, which is, at times, a difficult and contested space, invaded by noise, pollution and other energies. The other colors emerged to lighten this act of possession. To let the sun in, so to speak. Less an act of aggression more one of joy, celebration and aquiescence to fate. Defiance dancing with acceptance. An ecstatic vulnerability.

In the second gallery is a floor canopy of periwinkle shells atop which sit three analogue TVs playing one of Zina’s most recent video series: “Table Manners”.

The periwinkle is vitally important part of Niger Delta identity. The turquoise meat inside is highly nutritious and is used in a variety of soups that the Niger Delta and South Eastern Nigeria has become famous for. The shells are used as building materials, as jewelry and for many other uses besides. Zina states: “I like the idea of transposing this canopy to a gallery setting. It makes us re-evaluate these ubiquitous objects and it also it changes how we negotiate the space inside the gallery. We tread carefully and I believe it makes us experience the video installation differently.”

Table Manners is an ongoing series that films different people eating a meal. The tableaux are meticulously constructed though also reliant on what is available and nearby at the site of the shoot. Halfway between documentary and fiction, the wardrobe, background and table-settings are constructed to create a scene that in itself speaks of a regional identity. The meal is carefully-chosen, and the performer selected for their eating style. The viewer is encouraged to enter, sit down and enjoy the meal with the eaters Saro-Wiwa says: “A powerful exchange takes place when one not only eats a meal but watches a meal being consumed. One is filled up with a strange sort of energy that I cannot explain.” This energy may be a satisfying one or it may be a discomfiting one. Perhaps a bit a both. But there is a defiance in the way the eaters stare back, shifting the exchange from a voyeuristic one to something quite different. The viewer is also observed and asked to observe themselves.

Table Manners’ provocative title also speaks to colonially-instigated questions surrounding how Africans eat. All the eaters in the series use their hands and the work demonstrates the elegance and humanity of this action. Most of the world eats with their hands and the manners and mannerisms associated with the practice are laid bare in the installation. The film is also about the relationship between self and environment, the ongoing cycle of consumption and cell production. The food the participants are eating is food that is grown, reared and prepared in the Niger Delta. The food is fresh and delicious and of the soil. It is not imported and so the eaters are very much eating the earth and this earth becomes their flesh. This is powerful. It speaks of agency, power, sexuality, ownership, stewardship and one-ness. It says that we sit in this environment in a comfortable and powerful way. It demonstrates that there are moments of oneness with our environment to be found amidst the dislocation that has resulted from pollution or the vast amount of imported goods that we live amongst. At the end of the films the place of the filming is stated. This documentation simply serves to state: “an important ritual has taken place”.

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About The Artist

Zina Saro-Wiwa is a video artist and film-maker. She makes video installations, documentaries, photographs and experimental films. She also works with food using feasting as part of her performance practise as well as an exploration of the relationship between self and environment. Saro-Wiwa currently lives and works in the Niger Delta in Nigeria, where she is making new bodies of work for two major museum shows and where she is the founder of contemporary art gallery Boys’ Quarters Project Space, in the city of Port Harcourt, for which she curates three to four shows a year.

Her current interest lies in mapping emotional landscapes. She often explores highly personal experiences, carefully recording their choreography, making tangible the space between internal experience and outward performance as well as bringing cross-cultural and environmental/geographic considerations to bear on these articulations. The slippery dynamics between “truth” , “reality” and “performance” lie at the heart of her video performance work.

Saro-Wiwa’s first foray into the art world was in 2008 when her documentary This Is My Africa was shown at Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town. The film went on to be shown on HBO from 2010 to 2012. In 2010 her career as an artist began in earnest in New York, when she was invited to curate her first ever contemporary art exhibition at

SoHo’s, now disbanded, Location One Gallery. The group show – titled Sharon Stone in Abuja – was one that explored the narrative and visual conventions of the Nollywood film industry. In addition to co-curating the show, Saro-Wiwa created and contributed her first-ever installation pieces and experimental alt-Nollywood films. Since her New York debut she has been commissioned by the Menil Collection, Seattle Art Museum and the New York Times and has had work shown at the Pulitzer Foundation, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Stevenson Gallery, Goodman Gallery and many other institutions.

“My art career started when I left my journalism background and dedicated myself to changing the way the world saw Africa. I set up the (now dormant) organisation AfricaLab to this end. By immersing myself fully in this endeavour, I discovered that contemporary art practises would give me the power, license and freedom I needed. Art challenged me to be freer and deeper in my thinking. What I did not expect, however, was how focusing in on Africa has often resulted in work that transcended the “idea of Africa” and became deeply personal. And really it is the relationship between the personal and the political that interests me.”

Saro-Wiwa’s upcoming solo museum show of her own work will open at the Blaffer Museum, Houston, Texas (September 2015) and has been honoured with a substantial grant by The Warhol Foundation. The same show will go on to Krannert Museum in Illinois. She has a show opening in Manchester at Cornerhouse Gallery in May 2015, at Seattle Art Museum as part of their “Disguise” exhibition in June 2015. Her work can be found in museum, educational and private collections in the US, the Caribbean and the UK.

www.zinasarowiwa.com

www.boysquartersprojectspace.com