By Japhet Alakam

AS part of part of its mission of breaking boundaries,Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos last week presented a grand breaking exhibition tagged, The Progress of Love. The exhibition which was one of the events for the 5th year celebration was unique in many ways.

First it featured the works of many artists and was also an unprecedented transatlantic collaborative project between art institutions in three cities and two continents: CCA, Lagos, The Menil Collection, Houston and The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis.

The exhibition will be held in the two other cities too. The multifaceted exhibition which tries to explore the changing modes and meanings of love in today’s global society kicked off in October 2012 and will end in January 27, 2013.

The presentation of The Progress of Love at Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos explored the question or problem  associated with love through a series of unfolding events and of works in a range of media, highlighting performative artistic practices that are  yet to receive adequate presentation or critical engagement within the field of contemporary art in Nigeria.

The exhibition opened up a dialogue through presentations that challenge the audience  by  expanding their positions to rethink preconceptions and prejudices even as it  engaged in the multiple ways in which love affects human life.

Interactive performance

The exhibition project started in October with artist Valerie Oka  from Ivory Coast with an interactive performative installation which explored multiple ways in which romantic love manifests. This exhibition was followed  by  Wura-Natasha Ogunji(USA), whose  performance  explored love within the context of familial bond and personal memory.

Other artists involved include, Zaneli Muholi’s(South Africa), whose  In Difficult Love, 2010, a documentary  made with filmmaker Peter Goldsmid focuses on the lives of a homeless couple, a transgender traditional healer, and a lesbian single mom as well as on the artist in a candid portrayal of their lives and everyday realities.

Andrew Esiebo’s (Nigeria) in his multimedia work Living Queer African, 2007 documents the daily life of a young Cameroonian who by relocating to France to start a new life finds that he still has to struggle with his identities of being African and gay.

Adaora Nwandu’s trilogy of short films Say My Name is a contemporary love story in which conflicting feelings about masculinity, sexuality, race, self-definition and love are confronted.

The exhibition also features Nigerian born Temitayo Ogunbiyi’s interactive installation about expansion of love tagged The Love Text Message Booklet.  Temitayo Ogunbiyi’s work revolves around her latest discovery, the Love Text Message Booklet phenomenon that began in Lagos in early 2000.

Speaking about the exhibition, the founder/ curator, Bisi Silva, said that it is different from other forms of exhibitions done in Africa. “As far as contemporary African art is concerned, curatorial endeavours over the past two decades have focused extensively on interrogating recent political developments, primarily within the contexts of subjectivity and identity formation, citizenship, environmentalism and urbanism.

These issues have been approached predominantly in the context of post-independence euphoria and its disillusionment, particularly in African countries that have experienced civil strife, voluntary and forced migration and even societal disintegration. But now we are dealing on something that is very simple,something that touches on everyday life, Love”. She said.