Ayeni’s body of work If Demolition Could Be Colourful illuminates on his fascination with what is left behind in the process of development.
The Maker Lab is an expansion of The Maker, a bi-annual portfolio review program launched in 2013 for young emerging artists to showcase their work to diverse panel of judges and the public in a portfolio review. This year African Artists Foundation launches a thrilling new exhibition space.
The Maker Lab, which is solely focused on creating a platform for artists (aged 18-35) to showcase their work. The Maker Lab is a career springboard for emerging artists creating dynamic art.
The Maker Lab endeavours to function as a safe space for artistic dialogue between artists and their audiences, where artworks can be gleaned, appreciated and collected. It will be a space where young collectors and artists can grow in tandem.
Located in a new loft space at the African Artists’ Foundation, the Lab will exhibit new and dynamic works by young contemporary artists working with the same or similar thematic media/subject matter. They will be afforded the opportunity to have their works installed for public viewing, creating avenues for discussion, critique and sales through exhibitions, organised workshops and public round table discussions.
Pulse sat down with documentary photographer Ayeni Olajide to discuss seeing he perverse beauty in dilapidation and focusing his lens on the parts of Lagos that often get overlooked.
Ayeni ) is a photographer living and working in Lagos, Nigeria. A recent graduate of the Architecture program at University of Lagos, the 24 year old is currently pursuing a Masters in Environmental Design. Ayeni’s background in architecture lends a lyrical sense of structure to the composition of his images.
Ayeni considers himself a documentary photographer and his body of work often lies in documenting the idiosyncratic in Lagos Architecture. He is highly influence by the build environment and highlights the oft unnoticed in the urban landscape of Nigeria.
He is currently working on the idea of superficiality in Lagos buildings. Here is Home, is his first exhibition
Ayeni’s body of work If Demolition Could Be Colourful illuminates on his fascination with what is left behind in the process of development. With pictorial representations of ruined buildings that run the length of Isawo road, Ikorodu, Lagos, Ayeni seeks to challenge the visitor’s aesthetic reasoning about dilapidation and beauty.
The keen eye of the photographer captures split open ramshackles of vivid hues and muted tones, in a mode reminiscent of architectural section drawings, thus encouraging us to explore the underbelly by asking, “what will be remembered when a new beauty masks our memories?”. Ayeni also documents how the inhabitants of Isawo road relate with the vestiges of their environment.
Several of them had erected makeshift structures with discarded materials, emblematic of their resilience and adaptation to a new lifestyle, in an environment composed of beautiful ruins.
What attracts you to documentary photography in particular?
I believe it's sequencing. Being able to reveal to the viewer, what most others would not have seen.
Through your work, has your impression of Lagos changed. If so, how and why?
It has. Before photography, I was quite narrow minded about architecture in Lagos, and the people. I never really understood either. My work has provided me with a window to try to understand — in a different way —the people in Lagos. The different layers to the people, the city, to the buildings. Lagosians are energetic, Lagosians are sad, Lagosians are happy... The buildings and the spaces that they reside, give off and give back these emotions. It's made me realise, there is a conglomerate of beauty and dirt in this city.
Why did you choose to focus on unfinished and ruined buildings in particular?
Principally, it came from an emotional standpoint. Fear, perhaps. Since majority of these ruined buildings happened to be located in my residence. However, the interest to capture stages and processes that form part of a whole would be the overlaying interest. We easily forget the parts that make up a building, for example, when it is whole and complete. Or what it was before. Perfection and completion can mask the past and parts, I guess.
You mentioned there is beauty in dilapidation, when did you first notice this?
I can't really remember, but probably just before I began working on the, If Demolition Could Be Colourful, series. I believe there is beauty in everything. I think what I perceived to be beauty in dilapidation was beyond colour or aesthetics, but something that made me stop to cringe, smirk, or even smile in the midst of everything that might have been unpleasant.
What’s the main thing you want people to take away from your exhibit?
Alternative viewing. A different way to perceive the built environment (or things around us). It's components, it's people, probably our decadence, but yet to leave people with a smirk.
What does being exhibited at The Maker Lab mean to you and what does the initiative as a whole mean for young artists such as yourself?
It's been great. I had yet the opportunity to showcase my work on a large stage, and this is a very nice platform, for young emerging artists to have people acquainted with their work. It's also been very supportive, helpful; the whole Maker Lab team. Through the initiative I've also come to understand some of the deeper workings of organising an exhibition.
What are your favourite parts of Lagos and why?
Yaba, I believe. It's quite serene, and it's somewhere I enjoy photographing.