Voyage Retour
17 November–1 December 2013
Museum Folkwang
Lagos, Nigeria
Opening: 16 November
Federal Government Press
Broad Street
Lagos, Lagos Island
Nigeria
Hours: Monday–Friday 10am–4pm,
Saturday–Sunday noon–6pm
An exhibition project presented by the Photography Department of the Museum Folkwang, Essen, in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut, Lagos, Nigeria
Voyage Retour is the title of a new exhibition, the first to be staged by the Museum Folkwang in a country lying south of the Sahara. For this project, the Nigerian city of Lagos will host a show presenting pictures by the internationally renowned Nigerian photographer J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, alongside works by Rolf Gillhausen, Germaine Krull, Robert Lebeck, Malick Sidibé and Wolfgang Weber drawn from the Museum Folkwang’s collection. The exhibition tour is an integral part of the curatorial concept, which focuses on the perspectival shifts and exchanges that took place between Africa and Europe, as manifested in the medium of photography, from the 1920s up until the period of decolonisation and the transition to independence. Voyage Retour brings together images by European and African photographers that bear the marks of the various sociopolitical conditions that channelled their expression.
The exhibition’s venue, the Federal Government Press Building constructed in 1896 under the auspices of British colonial rule, can be seen as both a presentation space and one of the conceptual starting points of the project. Numerous relics from the past still evoke the building’s historical usage—it was used to house the state photographic archive into the mid-1990s and until ten years ago the official government gazettes were printed here—and these reminders are systematically incorporated into the exhibition’s concept and design. Voyage Retour picks up on this history and seeks to create a productive crossover space, intended as a platform for new discussions. The exhibition is designed with a particular eye to the specific conditions that pertain in the African countries south of the Sahara. It is against this background that a final conference titled Crossing Archives will be held with an international panel discussing overarching questions relating to the perspective, function and significance of photographic archives for society and artistic practice.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in English and French produced by Steidl/Göttingen.
The exhibition is sponsored by the German Federal Foreign Office.
Supported by
Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen
Fraunhofer Society, Munich
Hahnemühle Fine Art, Germany
HALBE Rahmen, Kirchen
HEIDE & VON BECKERATH Architekten BDA, Berlin
Braunschweig University of Art (HBK)
Julius Berger plc, Nigeria
Ministry of Information, Nigeria
Photolux, Schwabach
Crossing Archives
One-day conference and panel discussion
Sunday 1 December, 10am–6pm
Venue: Goethe-Institut, City Hall, Lagos Island, Lagos, Nigeria
Photographic archives in African countries lying south of the Sahara have for some years been a focus of attention not only in international academic discussions but also for the global art market. At the same time, cultural collective visual memory in the period between the colonial era and the “postcolonial age” is increasingly being dealt with in artistic and curatorial practice. This has given rise to new archives that conform to their own political and aesthetic parameters. In light of these processes and perspectives and with a specific thematic focus on the situation in Nigeria, the conference will address the impact these different realms have had on archival practices, which has led to a re-examination, and in many cases an energisation, of existing systems for organising and categorising the archive material.
The conference is supported by the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Lagos.
This event is free.
Contact for further information, admission to the conference and exhibition visits:
Goethe-Institut Nigeria
City Hall, Lagos Island, Lagos, Nigeria
T +234 1 7746888 / info [at] lagos.goethe.org
www.goethe.de/nigeria
