New gallery in Nigeria: Boys Quarters Project Space.
Open Wed-Sat 11am-6pm, 24 Aggrey Road, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.
First exhibition: ‘The Restless Glove’ with work of Perrin Oglafa and Zina Saro-Wiwa.
Perrin Oglafa, Am I an Aborigin II, 2008.
Boys’ Quarters Project Space is a brand new, pop-up contemporary art gallery, running for two years from 31st May 2014 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The project is founded by artist and filmmaker Zina Saro-Wiwa, who was born in the Niger Delta. She will curate a programme of temporary exhibitions by both local and international artists that address the idea of environment particularly in relation to the Niger Delta.
The term “Boys’ Quarters” is the one given to the servants’ quarters in Africa. A remnant of Nigeria’s colonial past, boys’ quarters are still in use today and it is where servants, poorer family members and sometimes tenants live. Naming the gallery in this way challenges the prevailing mentality of the boys’ quarters as a place and a condition to escape. Rather, it can be a place to find inspiration and reinvention.
Saro-Wiwa says: “The gallery aims to tell new stories about Niger Delta inner-life and environments through art, events and films. As well as invigorating local cultural production, it will begin the process of re-imagining this geo-politically significant, oil-producing region blighted by a history of violence, militancy, pollution and economic upheaval. Boys’ Quarters will test the potential of culture and art to transform the way people think and behave and test art’s ability to encourage a new engagement with places like the Niger Delta.”
Zina Saro-Wiwa,Transition, short film, 2012.
Situated in the old office building of Zina’s father, the late writer, activist and Nobel nominee Ken Saro-Wiwa, the space will be a prominent intervention in Port Harcourt’s visual arts scene, which is currently slight and overwhelmingly commercial.
Boys’ Quarters Project Space occupies the 2nd floor of 24 Aggrey Road, formerly Ken Saro-Wiwa’s main office building. 2015 is the 20th anniversary of his execution. Aggrey Road is the historic central point of Port Harcourt, which was 100 years old in 2013. It is a wide and busy commercial road close to the waterfronts and the port. Churches, gas stations, printers, mechanic shops and other commercial concerns line the road and it is notorious for its “area boys”, the local gangsters.
”My father always favoured more colourful, slightly down-at-heel areas. He said that that was where the stories were,” Zina says. “There are little to no public art spaces in Port Harcourt. For example our ‘National Gallery’ has no exhibition spaces; it is a collection of offices. Art and beauty have no place in this city, so, for me, placing the gallery in Ken Saro-Wiwa’s office is a owerful, restorative and symbolic act.”
Boys’ Quarters aims to be a peaceful and powerful oasis, transforming the city’s understanding and experience of art. Boys’ Quarters will encourage visitors to look and not touch, re-injecting a sense of reverence to the visual. Part of Boys’ Quarters’ job is to transform the experience of engaging with art, ideas and the visual in Port Harcourt, a place that lacks peace and physical beauty in the public realm.
Boys’ Quarters Project Space has received a major contribution to its perational funding from The African Arts Trust, a foundation created by Robert Devereux, African art lover, former Virgin Executive and Tate Museum’s African Acquisitions Board chairman, to support the emergence and growth of locally managed and sustainable contemporary art organisations in Africa.
www.theafricanartstrust.org.
For further information please contact Theresa at Theresa Simon & Partners
+44 (0)20 7734 4800
theresa@theresasimon.com
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© Zina Saro-Wiwa 2014