Abdulrazaq Awofeso, Sorrow Fears and Blood, installation view, Eva Maria Ocherbauer 2017.
Born London, United Kingdom (1986), lives and works in Abuja, Nigeria
Tatsuniya 2017 (2017 – ongoing)
Video installation, 8.00mins
plants, wooden desks, blac boards, chalk, note books
Courtesy of the artist
The act of remembering traumatic experiences creates an alternate reality, timeless, open-ended and ambiguous in its positioning between fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, the past and the present. The two opposing logics often spill into each other as students in northeastern Nigeria recollect their experiences of going to school in the midst of the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria. Many students have returned to schools and institutions that have been targeted by the insurgents and many have stories to tell about the killed, injured and abducted. But beyond this contemporary conflict, the school sites themselves are embedded in Nigerian history as a symbol of the colonial encounter. Furthermore, the Nigerian educational system deeply connects citizens through a fragile yet intimate collective memory of innocence, youth and endless possibility. “Tatsuniya” means a fable, a short story in the Hausa language, and the title of an experimental 8 minute video installation shown at the Lagos Biennial. It is a continuation of the “Education is Forbidden” multimedia documentary project began in 2015 about student experiences living at the forefront of the Boko Haram conflict.
