Nigeria Imaginary Incubator Project

As part of the curatorial research into the Nigeria Pavilion's core themes of nostalgia and utopia, MOWAA presented the Nigeria Imaginary Incubator Project at ART X Lagos 2023. In this interactive installation, a range of visitors to ART X, including artists, students, and art enthusiasts were able to interact with these themes through a series of short prompts. This archive of stories, memories, and dreams was used to inform the curation of the Nigeria Pavilion.

No one person can envision a nation as vast and as electric as Nigeria; so we asked the community. One cannot be an island - or have an ultimate view on the world; or a country. There is power in collective dreaming and imagining.

What does Nigeria smell like? What song reminds you of your grandmother? What do you miss the most about Nigeria?

These are some of the questions we asked audiences at Art X Lagos and EdoFest as part of the Nigeria Imaginary Incubator Project. In these installations, visitors were invited to interact with the themes of the Nigeria Pavilion- to recount their memories, nostalgias, ideas and perspectives of Nigeria.

These imaginings informed the research process and will be featured as part of the Nigeria Pavilion. Evoking the Nigeria Imaginary means looking at the state of things and listening to the voices of restless dreamers. Featured in the Pavilion, these audio responses will follow you and contextualise, and encourage you to imagine what was then, what is now and what could be.

This archive of stories, memories, and dreams was used to inform the curation of the Nigeria Pavilion and select perspectives have been featured as part of the installation in the pavilion developed in collaboration with artist Olukemi Lijadu also known a DJ Kem Kem.


LISTEN TO DJ KEM KEM'S MIX