The 2023 exhibition Oceans and the Interpreters brought photography, video and installation to Yaba College of Technology and the University of Lagos.
Curated by Nobuo Takamori, the three-week presentation examined cultural and historical relationships between Africa and Asia.
Wole Soyinka as a curatorial starting point
The exhibition drew inspiration from Wole Soyinka’s literary work The Interpreters.
Rather than illustrating the novel directly, the project used the idea of interpretation to examine how artists translate environment, history and cultural difference.
Artists from Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam, Greece and other contexts contributed to the touring exhibition.
An earlier presentation in Taipei had generated interest in African culture and in the less frequently discussed historical connections between the two continents.
Two institutions hosting one conversation
Showing the exhibition simultaneously at two Lagos campuses expanded its audience and placed contemporary art within educational environments.
The works used photographs, moving images and installations to explore boundaries, movement and exchange.
Representatives of the Yaba Art Museum emphasised that the artists were responding to their own environments and telling stories through distinct media.
The project was developed by organisations based in Lagos, Taipei, Dhaka and other locations, reflecting the international network behind the exhibition itself.
Oceans and the Interpreters did not present Africa and Asia as two uniform cultural blocks.
Its purpose was to create contact among artists whose work emerged from different local conditions.
The ocean in the title suggested both separation and connection, while interpretation described the process through which histories become visible across language, geography and artistic form.