CU-ULTURE AND TRADITION: SAME EXPERIENCE, DIFFERENT LOCAL

Curators

Adeola Arthur Ayoola

Artists

Saraj Adekola

Habeeb Andu

Uzoma Anyanwu

Gbolahan Ayoola

Olawunmi Banjo

Williams Chechet

Ayobola Kekere-Ekun

Dennis Osadebe

Jumoke Sanwo

Bob-Nosa Uwagboe

The Koppel Project is pleased to present Cu-ulture and Tradition: Same Experience, Different Local, curated by Adeola Arthur Ayoola (Kanbi Contemporary). This exhibition brings together ten mid-career and emerging artists living and working in Nigeria.

Cu-ulture and Tradition: Same Experience, Different Local examines the contrast between local cultural context with ‘translocal’ experiences to construct the notion of cultural identity in 21st century Africa and its diaspora. ‘Culture’ is premised on a sense of collective identity bounded by shared ideas with in hierarchical societies. Today, we live in an era where there is a shift towards the transfer of allegiance from vertical societies to more fluid, horizontal groups caused by globalisation, technology, and new media. In these horizontal societies, cultural identity is no longer based on rigid social constructs or geographical abstracts, but rather fluid associations or connections across physical and virtual boundaries.

In the critically acclaimed Things Fall Apart by African’s best-known novelist, Chinua Achebe, he espoused the differences in culture in the context of post-colonial society in the quote “the world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.” But in today’s interconnected global community cultural identity is based on ‘translocal’ experiences, as posited by the writer Taiye Selasi in her famous Ted talk Don’t ask me where I’m from, ask me where I’m local.

Cu-ulture and Tradition: Same Experience, Difference Local aims to illustrate the pluralised ‘translocal’ African perspective created by new media which is reshaping customs and traditions that are at variance with modernity