LagosPhoto Home Museum Exhibition Set for Virtual Launch
The African Artists Foundation (AAF) is set for the virtual launch of the pilot edition of Home Museum to mark the 2020 LagosPhoto festival on October 24.
According to the founder, AAF, Azu Nwabogu, the exhibition is curated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for cultural restitution.
The Home Museum is born out of the connection between these two conditions. First, staying at home propelled many to reflect on their immediate environment, family heirlooms and personal belongings.
Second, the project initiated a visual conversation across continents on restitution and the role of the museum in the 21st century.
“Photography becomes the democratic vector for a process of rapid response restitution, or fast shutter retrieval, promoting greater awareness of cultural heritage both absent and present.
“One common factor to nearly all images is that they were taken in 2020, during the high point of COVID-19, by individuals living in home exile all over the world,” says Azu Nwagbogu in an interview with MoMA.
He added: “we seek to create a counter-model of communication between artists and co-creators that works as an alternative to traditional and competitive forms of art and museum practice, promoting mutual aid and solidarity.
“We want visitors to the Home Museum to be intrigued and feel excited about their neighbours. We want people to recognise themselves and their own journeys in those of others. We want you to discover how different human experience can be, how meanings can be shared and yet remain individual at the same time.
“How an object of virtue can mean home, heritage, journey, and culture. How it can stem from a sense of family, be passed down through several hands, become a witness of time, a guiding figure, a carrier of memories, a teacher that helps you to re-imagine, or a symbol that acts as a painful reminder of past times. Ultimately the object of virtue has infinite meanings.”
The AAF has commissioned a research group from Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts, Birds of Knowledge to build the actual online architecture for LagosPhoto20’s Home Museum. THISDAY Art and Culture Journalist, Yinka Olatunbosun has been named as one of the co- creators of this maiden edition