The Museum of Modern Art has announced that seven Nigerian artists will be featured in their exhibition series, New Photography. The New Photography series is an annual exhibition that explores local contemporary scenes across the world. The seven artists, all at various stages in their careers, that will be featured explore the spatial, social, and historical undercurrents of Lagos and they are Kelani Abass, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Yagazie Emezi, Amanda Iheme, Abraham Oghobase, Karl Ohiri, and Logor Oluwamuyiwa. These artists are known for their exploration of the image as a social medium, and they are united by their critical use of photographic forms.
Image courtesy of British Journal of Photography
It is a period of firsts for the Museum of Modern Arts. Curated by Oluremi Onabanjo, this New Photography series is the first of its kind. The exhibition series will mark MoMA’s return to gallery exhibitions in New York after five years. It will also mark the first time any of these photographers will exhibit at MoMA, and MoMA’s first group exhibition in the history of the museum to engage the work of living West African photographers.
Image courtesy of British Journal of Photography
Since the New Photography series began in 1985, it has introduced works by over 150 artists from all over the world. Initiating the next phase in MoMA’s celebrated series, New Photography 2023 is the first to focus on a specific art scene across the globe. Each artist in the exhibition is connected to the vibrant art community flourishing in the port city of Lagos (Èkó) – the commercial capital of Nigeria, and one of the most populated cities on the African continent. The exhibiting artists are challenging the idea of the photograph as document by interrogating varying forms of visual representation and making space for new perceptions and encounters. Some of these artists have taken scenes of everyday life in Lagos as their subject, rendering new visual expressions of the city through formal experimentation and poetic compositions, or by chronicling personal experiences at the heart of political action. Others engage archival photographs to reveal the psychological traumas and possibilities embedded in architecture, geographical sites, and historical figures.
“In a world where global systems of relation are a given, photographic images occupy a crucial position. No longer is the photograph solely a means of recording our surroundings, it has become a central prism through which lived experience is made and shared,” says Onabanjo.
The exhibition is on view from May 28 through September 16, 2023.
