Atlantica

Atlantica Logo 1
Atlantica Logo 2
Atlantica Logo 3
Atlantica Logo 4
Atlantica Logo 5
Atlantica Logo 6

- towards a pan-Atlantic biennial of contemporary art and critical enquiry

Adire fabric pattern
Platform 1: LagosUNILAG / University of Exeter
Atlantica Logo

UNILAG-Exeter Atlantica Symposium
Institute of African and Diaspora Studies

Seen from Lagos

African Re-groundings

Dates:
Tuesday 25 - Wednesday 26 June 2024

Venue:
Arthur Mbanefo Digital Research Centre (AMDRC)
University of Lagos (UNILAG)

Teams link:
https://rb.gy/at433c

Programme of Events

Tuesday 25th

  • 8.30am–9.00am
    Arrival and Registration
    Housekeeping rules and remarks
    Dr Abisoye Eleshin
    (IADS, UNILAG)
  • 9.05am–9.15am
    Welcome address

    Prof Muyiwa Falaiye
    (Director, IADS, UNILAG)

    Prof William Gallois
    (Asst. Director, Institute of Arabic & Islamic Studies, University of Exeter)

  • 9.15am–9.25am
    Opening remarks
    Prof Folasade Ogunsola
    (Vice Chancellor, UNILAG)
  • 9.25am–9.30am
    Keynote Speaker Citation
    Dr Abisoye Eleshin
    (IADS, UNILAG)
  • 9.30am–10.30am
    Keynote address
    With my Toes in the Soil: From a Plateau to a Spiritual Atlantica
    Prof Ruth Simbao
    (National Research Foundation SARChI Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, Rhodes University, RSA)
  • 10.30am–10.45am
    Have you ever seen the Sunrise on Brackish Waters? (Eko Ile)
    Lara Oshinowo
  • 10.45am–11.10am
    Tea Break
  • 11.10am–12.40pm

    Session 1: African Re-groundings

    Bizuum Yadok – In Defense of Leoparditude: A Case to Update an Indigenous African Literary Theory (VIRTUAL)

    Gbenga Fasiku – Embodied Philosophy: Foundation for Unbundling African Knowledge System

    Bolanle Adetula – Subconscious trails of African Study: Re-imaging Contemporary African Studies.

    Muhammad Finch – Unveiling an Ante-Onto-Epistemology: Shaikh Ibrāhīm Niasse and the Paradigmatic Shift in Afro-Islamic Thought (VIRTUAL)

    Bolatito Kolawole – Indigenous Language Re-learning and the Question of Return

    Chair: Prof Muyiwa Falaiye
    (Director, IADS, UNILAG)
  • 12.40pm–1.00pm
    The Egba Revolt: Recovering the Egba Women’s strategies, Stories and Songs
    Lanaire Aderemi
  • 1.00pm–1.55pm
    Lunch
  • 2.00pm–2.10pm
    Estefi Bournot – Specular Shores: Afro-Brazilian Entanglements from Abolition to the Present (VIRTUAL)
  • 2.10pm–2.25pm
    Screening of “(Other)” Foundations
  • 2.25pm–2.45pm
    Conversation with Aline Motta
  • 2.45pm–3.00pm
    Short break
  • 3.00pm–4.30pm

    Session 2: African Aesthetics and Material Cultures

    Zainab Bello – Decolonization of Textile Narratives: A Visual Exploration of Hausa Folktales As Inspiration in Wax Print Designs

    Umana Nnochiri – Alaptal Cloth: Visual metaphors on textiles (VIRTUAL)

    Kehinde Adepegba – Interrogating Yoruba Art Through the Epistemology of Number in Yoruba Belief

    Abiodun Abdul – Past Speculation for Future Inspiration (VIRTUAL)

    Nathaniel Ogunyale – Beyond Utility: Understanding the Aesthetic and Cultural Dimensions of Yoruba Domestic Artifacts

    Chair: Prof Peju Layiwola
    (Art History, UNILAG)
  • 4.35pm–4.50pm
    The Poverty of Revolutionary Leaders and the October 20, 2020 Experience
    Amenaghawon Idawu
  • 4.50pm–5.00pm
    Housekeeping and Remarks
    Prof Ayo Yusuff
    (Head of Research, IADS, UNILAG)
  • 5.15pm–6.30pm
    Drinks Reception: Shine Your Eye Exhibition
    Deji Akinpelu

Wednesday 26th

  • 9.00am–9.05am
    Housekeeping rules and remarks
    Dr Moses Yakubu
    (IADS, UNILAG)
  • 9.05am–9.10am
    Introduction of Lead Speaker
    Dr Moses Yakubu
    (IADS, UNILAG)
  • 9.10am–10.00 am
    Lead Speaker, Azu Nwagbogu (Director, African Artists Foundation/LagosPhoto) in conversation
    Chair: Prof Tom Trevor
    (Contemporary Art & Curation, University of Exeter)
  • 10.05am–10:20am
    Nigeria’s Destiny – Poetry as Mirror of Our Cultural Values
    Ayo Ayoola-Amale
  • 10.20am–10.40am
    Tea break
  • 10.45am–12.15pm

    Session 3A: Uncolonialism

    Temitope Fagunwa – African Studies and Marxism: Any Intersection?

    Olalekan O Hamed –When the “Gown” is not in “Town”: An Epistemological Discourse of Odun Ifa, Odun Egungun and Esu

    Isaiah Olayode – Cultural Sensitivity: Redefining Methods of Data Collection in African Studies

    Olabode Ojoniyi – From the Yoruba Omoluabi Essence Philosophy to Omoluabi Performance Aesthetics for the Nigerian Stage

    Chair: Prof William Gallois
    (Asst. Director, Institute of Arabic & Islamic Studies, University of Exeter)
  • 10.45am–12.15pm

    Session 3B: Ethnographies

    Manta Yadok – Creating Folkloric Content Through Digital Ethnographical Approach: Example of My Beautiful Plateau Proverbs Facebook (VIRTUAL)

    Abiodun T Adejumo – Ethnic Associations and Traditional Institutions in Democratic Nigeria: A Methodological Perspective

    Amoo Abdussalam – A Morphosemantic Analysis of Death Related Yoruba personal names (VIRTUAL)

    Bukola Amodu – Si Panpanla, Iyawo t'owo osi b'obe

    Dr Isoken Onoyona-Ekeocha – Won te ge Asake l'eti lo: an ontological exploration of mutilated bodies, as seen from Lagos

    Chair: Prof Patrick Oloko
    (Literature & Cultural Studies, UNILAG)
  • 12.15pm–12.25pm
    Short break
  • 12.25pm–12.40pm
    Reimagining Roots: A Multisensory Journey
    Mykel Akomaye
  • 12.45pm–1.40pm
    PANEL: Decolonizing Knowledge Production and Consumption in Post-Colonial Africa: Challenges and Pathways for a Global Decolonial Africanity
    Fela Kuti Study Group
  • 1.40pm–2.35pm
    Lunch
  • 2.40pm–3.00pm
    Echoes of Resistance: Unveiling Anticolonial Soundscapes through Listening Sessions
    Rui Vilela
  • 3.00pm–4.15pm

    Session 4: Atlantica

    Darren Woodland – Afrofuturist Motifs of Metamorphosis and Transfiguration in Media Arts and Design (VIRTUAL)

    Feyisayo Ademola-Adeoye – Re-grounding African Studies through African Languages: Making a case for Nigerian Pidgin

    Abideen Amodu – Queerness in Lagos: Space, Place, and Community Attunements

    Hellen Kilelo – Decoloniality in African Research: What Lessons can we draw from studying the Wahine Maori?

    Chair: Dr Anthony Okeregbe
    (Philosophy, UNILAG)
  • 4.15pm–4.40pm
    African Indigenous Knowledge Production and the Arts: Reading from Wishes - A Play
    Dr Abisoye Eleshin
  • 4.40pm–4.55 pm
    Closing Remarks
    Prof Muyiwa Falaiye
    (Director, IADS, UNILAG)
  • 4.55pm–5.00pm
    Vote of Thanks
    Prof Ayo Yusuff
    (Head of Research, IADS, UNILAG)
  • 5.30pm
    Dinner/Social gathering

The inaugural UNILAG-Exeter Atlantica symposium, Seen from Lagos is oriented towards the future in its exploration of solutions and routes through barriers which we find in the contemporary academy. It begins with the fear identified by Muyiwa Falaiye in his 2017 essay “Is African Studies Afraid of African Philosophy?” If even specialised branches of Area Studies devoted to the study of Africa are either ignorant of, or uneasy in dealing with, theories, concepts and methods drawn from African knowledge systems, what hope is there for the broader fields of the Humanities and the Social Sciences?

While the subsequent years since the publication of Falaiye’s article have vibrantly trailed the rise of a “decolonial turn,” particularly in institutions in the Global North, there is scant evidence that academic disciplines have shown any appetite to find new ways to think from or with modes of thought from the Global South. Equally noteworthy is the inadequacy of mutually conceived intentional conversations bridging knowledge spaces of the Global South. Though unacknowledged, this is partly a function of the difficulties entailed in both unlearning existing modes of perceiving the world, and navigating through various entanglements of subjectivities, alongside the hard graft needed in opening one’s mind to understanding through other languages, concepts and modes of being.

This Atlantica platform directly addresses such deficits through the provision of case studies which it hopes will inspire others to see the expected awakening which can arrive through approaches to knowledge creation which find inspiration in specific schools of thinking or praxis from the African continent. As such, it showcases philosophical studies which are able to engage prevalent pedagogies, explore and situate the value of indigenous epistemologies; not necessarily divorcing them from broader currents within their academic fields, though naming and enumerating their specific utility.

A second originating position lies in the study of art, both through forms of cultural practice and in the discipline of the history of art as it has been reconstrued by African – and especially Nigerian – writers such as Chika Okeke-Agulu and Rowland Ọlá Abíọ́dún. Beginning with this latter thinker, we take seriously his admonition that we are faced with the “urgent task” not simply of documenting global differences but ensuring “the survival and essential role of African artistic and aesthetic concepts in the study of art in Africa.” For this to happen, Abíọ́dún proposes a progressive abandonment of the conventional methods of the Western humanities, for their tendency is one of “concealing and even eliminating the social and religio-aesthetic foundation of the visual arts.”

Looking beyond Africa towards other exemplars, we are able to see the manner in which fundamental notions of time, history and aesthetics have been upended in quite general, as well as scholarly, fashions in locales such as Australia, where indigenous modes of artistic production have induced paradigmatic changes in thought. Similar tendencies can also be seen in specialised fields of study in Islamic art, in which the specificity of forms of Muslim spiritual enlightenment are prized above the emplacement of works of art within Western frames of knowledge.

Returning to Nigeria, it is arguable that one of the greatest conceptual gains which has emerged through the creation of indigenous forms of modernism by groups such as the Nsukka School has been their imagination of cultural production as a marriage of forms. Far from precluding deeper understandings of indigenous knowledge, fine art presents opportunities to disseminate such understandings in new fashions, to both local and international audiences. Relatedly, the degree to which an easy interchange across the study and making of art – evinced at UNILAG in the work of Peju Layiwola and others – reflects a positive belief in the ideal of conceptual and embodied forms of knowledge-making working in tandem.


Seen from Lagos is the first in a new series of Atlantica platforms and events, building towards a pan-Atlantic biennial of contemporary art and critical enquiry. Working with artists, writers and communities, Atlantica aims to re-examine the multiple histories and ‘historical presents’ of the Atlantic from diverse contemporary perspectives, challenging the supposedly ‘universal’ knowledge system that has inherently privileged a Eurocentric worldview.

Seen from Lagos is co-convened by Prof Muyiwa Falaiye, Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, and Prof Peju Layiwola, Art History, at University of Lagos, together with Prof William Gallois, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, and Prof Tom Trevor, Art History and Visual Culture, at University of Exeter. The programme has been coordinated with the support of Prof Ayodele Yusuff and Ms. Bolatito Kolawole. The Atlantica series is convened by Tom Trevor.

University of LagosInstitute of African and Diaspora Studies