Ndidi Dike

Born London, United Kingdom (1960), lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria

A History of a City in a Box 2019
Archival photographs, documents, found earth and paper and wood file boxes
Courtesy of the artist

During her initial site visit to Independence House earlier that year, Ndidi Dike discovered the remnants of an office space on the building’s second floor that still contained bureaucratic government documents from the 1980s. As a precondition of this building’s use for the biennial, the office had to be closed-off with plywood to conceal these documents; the office now exists in the form of a large impenetrable box. Inspired by her discovery and subsequent concealment of documents, in this installation Dike reflects on the aesthetics of bureaucracy in Lagos by assembling hundreds of wooden file boxes of the sort introduced during the colonial era to protect and conceal information. Archival documents and images of the city are variously buried and concealed with the boxes, and so models how urban political systems depend on the suppression of information to maintain order. “Information is one of the greatest currencies in Lagos,” Dike notes. “Information is hidden and buried; it is inaccessible to the people and only permitted to those in power.”