By exhibiting artist Eman Ali. Courtesy of @lagos_biennial.
If one is to believe several opinion pieces published within the last few years, the concept of the art biennial—a large scale exhibition held every two years—is either dead, or slowly dying. The time of death: circa 2015, give or take a couple of years. Columnists have been eager to to go down in history as having “called it”. The causes of death (or ailment) are as diverse as the variations on the biennial itself. While some have argued that it is an increasingly fraught template, others see it merely as an effective engine for tourism and self-aggrandising soft-diplomacy (as in Venice), or as a sure recipe for controversy (overspending allegations after Documenta 14, or the Emmet Till saga at the Whitney Biennial 2017).
But the biennial remains an audience favourite. On average, only two weeks per year remain unclaimed by the ambitious programming of some biennial somewhere. Art lovers and art industry professionals are spoilt for choice, always on the lookout for the next destination on the biennial-hopping circuit. The Nigerian capital of Lagos is the latest destination on the circuit. Having returned for its second edition last week, it is one of the latest beneficiaries of the shift towards an economy of event-based art experiences. The second edition of Nigeria’s first and only biennial has defied both discursive (the biennial is dying/dead) and material odds to get here, beautifully parsed by its poetic title: How to Build a lagoon With Just a Bottle of Wine?, taken from the poem “A Song for Lagos” by Akeem Lasisi.
By exhibiting artist Favour Jonathan. Courtesy of @lagos_biennial.
This edition’s curatorial focus is on the intersections of visual art, architecture, urbanism, climate change, and manmade as well as natural environments—a range that is well reflected in the curatorial team of three. While Antawan I. Byrd is Assistant Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and enjoys many ties with the Lagos art community, Tosin Oshinowo has served as lead Architect at Lagos’ cmDesign Atelier since 2012. Meanwhile, Oyindamola Fakeye, another member of the team, is an experiential art curator who co-founded and has directed the Video Art Network Lagos since 2009.
For the curators, the title is “a provocation for artists and the public to meditate on the history and present makeup of city’s built environment”. Importantly, the Lagos Biennial also takes account of its own position within a larger ecosystem of biennials, alluding to “the nascent state of the biennial itself as a platform,” a sharp contrast to what some commentators have suggested. For the curators, the fact of Lagos’ return, “speaks to the city’s “can-do” spirit in the face of seemingly insurmountable social, political, and economic obstacles.”
Of 350 applications, the curators selected 38 artists from 15 countries for a rather compact edition hosted entirely on Lagos Island. The artists, in responding to the question posed by the Biennial’s title, employ different mediums and are informed by various artistic traditions. For instance Rahima Gambo, a Nigerian artist most known for her photography, is returning to the event this year after installing plants and desks in a disused train wagon to discuss Boko Haram’s insurgency on education during the first edition of the Lagos Biennial. Other artists include Jordanian artist Dina Khouri, whose work consistently stretches contemporary painting, but who also experimented with drones for her installation at the 2018 Wiesbaden Biennial. Elsewhere, Japanese artist Hiroko Tsuchimoto draws from her research on human behaviour, particularly empathy, discomfort, curiosity and confrontation in social situations, to develop a rejoinder to this year’s Biennial’s themes.
By exhibiting artist Karl Ohiri. Courtesy of @lagos_biennial.
Like few other places in the world, Lagos—yet again—is testing the limits of the biennial platform simply by being held in Lagos. After the first edition of the Lagos Biennial, a pun ensued after the residents of the derelict railway yard (that the Biennial was eyeing for the exhibition) and who had helped build the installations were evicted without much ado days before it began. While even the organisers seemed surprised by the evictions, the edition’s proposition, “Living on the Edge,” acquired an uncanny palpable relevance, referencing Lagos’ often harsh sense of impermanence that is best captured in acclaimed novelist Chimamanda Adichie’s quote: “Lagos will not court you. It is a city that is what it is [..] It is not like Nairobi where flowers are sold in traffic.”
If the possibility of another biennial is the question at hand, then Lagos itself—a mega city of circa 23 million people—is the ideal place to test what the archetypal biennial can or cannot be for us today. Lagos might just be what the biennial format needs to move from a space of convention and habit, to a liminal space of contention, curiosity and innovation, a space in which—literally— everything is possible. We know that biennials—and yes, art itself—thrives on this premise. But let there be no illusions, there will always be a price to pay: financial, ecological, moral or otherwise.
The 2nd edition of the Lagos Biennial runs through to 23 November 2019.