ART CITIES:Berlin-Akinbode Akinbiy
Walking the streets of Bamako, Berlin, Cairo, Dakar, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos, or other megacities, Akinbode Akinbiy studies social structures, uncovers the hidden, and makes visible the unseen. On the one hand, it is the temporal rhythm of urban and rural lives that is of interest to him and, on the other, the way the architecture and the flow of the city influences those lives. Akinbiyi’s attention is captured by the rituals of everyday politics, spirituality, humanity beyond the polished surfaces of the constructed ego. In 2017 he was invited to Documenta 14, which prompted him to move toward a broader narrative.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gropius Bau Archive
The exhibition “Six Songs, Swirling Gracefully in the Taut Air” showcases works from various long-term series composed by Berlin-based Nigerian photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi over four decades. This exhibition explores Akinbiyi’s approach as a wanderer and mediator between the hemispheres, ceaselessly documenting and walking across coastlines and cities. The city is his studio and people’s daily rituals become recurring manifestations before his camera. This exhibition highlights his unique relation to medium format photography and use of the twin-lens reflex camera in communicating the soul of inhabited landscapes. Taken from hundreds of photographs that comprise these durational projects and form the artist’s personal archive, a special selection is brought together at the Gropius Bau, marking his first major solo exhibition in Germany after his participation at documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens. In contrast to a world obsessed with the continuous stream of “instant”, Akinbiyi slowly assembles striking details from the quotidian surface, lived rhythms and social textures of places. Preferring to witness undramatic moments – both morbid and joyous – he situates how hope resides in the dark inner life of cities, as well as the convening between breathing bodies and spirituality. The artist notes, “What I’m doing is observing, taking part in this urban phenomenon and trying to record documents. It is a kind of fine sensibility of understanding the passageways within the city”. Notable series of work on view include “Lagos: All Roads” (1980s- ) which plots the many moods and faces of Akinbiyi’s home city and Africa’s largest metropolis, Lagos. His photographs approach the urban environment shuttling between anonymity and kinship, noise and refuge. The viewer experiences these image sequences as contiguous and open-ended. Yet, the mega city is never ever fully grasped and circumnavigated, since it is in a continuous phase of reinvention and collapse. While several of the pictures in this series focus on street corners, social processes and marketplaces, many scenes plot the spread of photography studios, print outlets and text facades that convey the visual grammar of Lagos and its perennial relation to image-building. Akinbiyi has stressed the importance of “making rather than taking images”, recognizing that picture-making is an event in itself, the photographer combines feeling and craft. The exhibition’s title “Six Songs, Swirling Gracefully in the Taut Air” suggests the importance of the sonic register in Akinbiyi’s practice as much as his participation in the visual grammar of listening. One may also study his photography through the codes of improvised jazz such as collective affinity, experimental music notation and seriality. The sacred and profane become interwoven in “Sea Never Dry” (1980s- ), a series that brings together coastal zones of West African cities and Europe, portraying public life around beaches while also capturing interludes such as sacred ceremonies, street trade, tourism and environmental degradation. “African Quarter” (1990s- ) is a series of photographs made in Berlin since the late 1990s that plots candid encounters amidst the African diaspora and Afro-German communities in Berlin, especially around the neighbourhood of Wedding. Akinbiyi traverses streets that are historically pegged to Germany’s colonial exploits since the Berlin conference of 1884 including recent stories of migration and persecution. Refracted views of the transforming metropolis recall ghosts from a shared past and subaltern voices of the present. As a counter-mapping of the city, streets such as May-Ayim-Ufer and Martin-Luther-King-Weg are visited in African Quarter to recall figures who strove to combat racism and upheld the long history of anti-colonial struggle. In sum, this series extends from the photographer’s autobiographical experience as a Berliner. A concluding element to thε exhibition is the short film by visual artist and writer Emeka Okereke “I wonder as I wander” that provides a deeper view into Akinbode Akinbiyi’s methodology, anecdotal records and working principles, shot in Berlin and Bamako.
Info: Curator Natasha Ginwala, Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, Berlin, Duration: 7/2-17/5/20, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon 10:00-19:00, www.berlinerfestspiele.de
