Lagos Biennial 2024
Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos
Design: Folakunle Oshun and Facundo Hernandez
As part of the scenography for the 2024 edition of the Lagos Biennial, curatorial interventions into public spaces were created for artist talks, exhibitions, and performances. The twin plywood pavilions shadowed the brutalist towers stationed on the perimeter of Tafawa Balewa Square.
The concrete towers were constructed in 1977 by the military regime of General Yakubu Gowon as an addition to the square’s facade. Historically, the square served as a racecourse for the British colonial administration from the mid-19th century and was remodelled into a military parade ground to host ceremonial functions by the Nigerian military government in the late 1970s.
The shadows signal a freezing of time, a moment through the biennial to critically contemplate the impact of post-independence architectural ideologies on Lagos’s built environment and a fraught colonial and military past.
