“Show Me The World Mister” is an independent exhibition featuring two new films by artist Ayo Akingbade. Shot on location in Nigeria, “The Fist” and “Faluyi” are creations that draw on her procedures of permanent interest, place-making, legacy and power.
On view at the Chisenhale Gallery in London until February 05, 2023, the films shot on 35mm film, offers a comfortable representation of a modernist style processing plant – the main Guinness bottling plant working beyond Ireland and the UK, located in Nigeria, 30km from the center of Lagos, in the modern space of Ikeja.
Completed in 1962, after Nigeria’s liberation from England, the manufacturing plant is a site where the joint chronicles of industrialization and labor take center stage. Noting the comings and goings of workers, the gathering and pressing lines of the factory, Ayo Akingbade insightfully presents the entrenched governmental issues implanted in the creation of the drink.
At the far end of the exhibition, the artist’s next film, Faluyi, follows the heroine Ife as she goes on an excursion into family heritage and magic within the hereditary land. Shot in 16mm on the slopes of Idanre, this film is a reflection on the artist’s relationship with Nigeria. Global perspectives on rocky slopes surrounded by thick forests structure the framework of a delicate story of unhappiness and longing, turned into trust and celebration.
The two films are arranged within a larger installation framed by a central hub of aluminum, steel and polycarbonate.
Working in an air of diminished light, the architecture of the exhibition – an old production line and distillery in the front – is still discernible, but through a colorful film that brings out the residue of the harmattan season in West Africa.
The show escapes the absolute blur to deliver visible foundations of the manufacturing plant and revisit Faluyi’s blurry streetlights.
