Documenting Fiction, presented at the FNB Joburg Art Fair with the support of Pirelli, includes a selection of artists exhibited in this year’s upcoming edition of LagosPhoto, the annual festival of photography in Lagos, Nigeria.
Documenting Fiction examines contemporary photographers working in Africa who negotiate the boundaries and relationships between photography, beliefs, and truths. Incorporating conceptual and performative strategies that expand traditional photographic practice, many contemporary artists working on the continent move beyond the confines of the photojournalistic gaze.
These artists produce work that considers the complex social and political concerns that define a new Africa in the twenty-first century, and they explore how the ubiquity of images plays a vital role in how reality is constructed and articulated. Utilizing genres such as staged narratives, performance, appropriation, and self-portraiture, these artists push the temporal and spatial boundaries of the photographic medium. In doing so, Documenting Fiction considers how these artists imagine different futures and charter fictive worlds, using photography as a catalyst to investigate the changing realities of Africa today.
Participating artists include Jenevieve Aken (Nigeria), Namsa Leuba (Switzerland), Cristina de Middel (Spain), Karl Ohiri and Riikka Kassinen (UK/Finland), and Patrick Willocq (France). Jenevieve Aken adopts a performative practice as she explores the “super femmemfatale” character and its conflicting notions of freedom and isolation in a constricted social environment. Namsa Leuba infuses fashion and portraiture to critique the representation of the female body that is at once fictional, fantastical, and commercially viable. Cristina de Middel recontextualizes a Nigerian novel from the 1950s to create ambiguous narratives that blend historical obscurity and the documentary tradition.
Karl Ohiri and Riikka Kassinen stage a performance where the artist takes on the persona of a traditional African healer, acting as a coping mechanism and mourning ritual for his mother’s death. Patrick Willocq constructs mis-en-scènes in collaboration with local communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, documenting indigenous customs through careful composed theatrical images.
Launched in 2010, LagosPhoto is the first and only international arts festival of photography in Nigeria.
In a month-long annual festival, events include exhibitions, workshops, artist presentations, panel discussions, screenings, and large-scale installations in congested public spaces in Lagos. LagosPhoto aims to provide a platform for the development and education of contemporary photography in Africa by establishing mentorship and cross-cultural collaboration with lo al and international artists. The fifth
edition of LagosPhoto will take place October 25 – November 26, 2014 in Lagos, Nigeria.