Fragments of Being and Belonging

Looking through my dad’s archive, I am taken on a journey into the collective consciousness of popand cultural values in Nigeria around the 70s, a post-colonial era dominated by ethnic, regional,and political conflicts.

This project engages the dynamics of identity through socio-cultural concepts of family, culture, and community. It reflects and reconstructs a relationship between the past and the presentthrough alternative narratives by incorporating self-portraits into old family pictures, following thetradition of portraits popularized in that era with striking poses, fashion, and textile patterns. 

Interrogating the material qualities of a physical photograph to create new realities through layersof visual textures. It sparks conversations on how the past is never really dead but evolving andindicates the substantial importance attached to being a member of a family, such as receivinglove and having a sense of belonging.