Dream Chamber

Emeka Okereke

February 5, 2019

Since 2009, the Invisible Borders Trans-African Project, an artist-led initiative from Nigeria, has assembled African artists – photographers, writers, filmmakers – to travel by road across the African continent. Emeka Okereke is the founder and member of this project.
The aim of the project is to question the place of borders in the continent as imposed cartographies; an artificial construct. Through their experiences of everyday encounters while on the road, the participants create works that seek to offer an alternative gaze to the prevalent narratives of African realities.

So far, there have been 7 editions of the Road Trip. For the 8th edition, the road trip takes the artists from Lagos, Nigeria to Maputo, Mozambique. Although the road trips are usually free of themes, one overarching thought-frame is “history is present”. Thus the artists were looking, as it were, “to enter the volatile negotiations between the past and present” on the chosen route.
The road trip has been divided into two batches.

So far Batch A has travelled from Nigeria all the Way to Rwanda, through Cameroon and DRC, in the last quarter of 2018. The second batch of the road trip has been scheduled for this year, 2019. The participants on this leg will complete a journey to Mozambique.

While on the road, the artists make encounters, engage in conversations, organise presentations – all of which inspire the works they create while on the road. The artists share their impressions, thought processes and momentary bodies of work while on the go on their official blog.

The works presented here are part of the photo essay “Dream Chamber” by Emeka Okereke that which aims to articulate “the ground shifting under our feet” in the process of border renegotiations and reconfigurations taking place in various forms and scales across the African continent.

You can find more information about the road trip and access more works by other artists on the Invisible Borders website.
ALL IMAGES ON THIS PAGE: © Emeka Okereke
EQUIPMENT: Leica M10 with Summilux-M 35 f/1.4 Asph, Summicron-M 50 f/2

Emeka Okereke+-

Emeka Okereke is a Nigerian visual artist and writer who lives and works between Lagos and Berlin. A past member of the renowned Nigerian photography collective Depth of Field (DOF), he holds a bachelor’s/master’s degree from the Ecole Nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris and has exhibited in biennales and art festivals in cities across the world.
Okereke is the founder and artistic director of Invisible Borders Trans-African Project, an artist-led initiative that addresses gaps and misconceptions posed by frontiers dividing the 54 countries of the African continent. His work oscillates between diverse mediums. He employs photography, video, poetry and performative interventions in the exploration of one over-arching theme: that of borders. More

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Dream Chamber

Emeka Okereke