Where Memory Refuses to Disappear
The first thing visitors encountered was not a portrait of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
There was no monumental image announcing the legendary musician, no chronological timeline retracing the rise of Afrobeat, nor any attempt to celebrate a figure whose life has already generated an immense body of literature, photography and film. Instead, Fela, The Feminine Resistance, presented at New Culture Studio in Ibadan, quietly redirected attention toward those who have remained at the margins of this well-documented history: the women who lived, worked, created, resisted and endured alongside him.
Developed by Togolese visual artist Tessilim Adjayi during a three-month artistic research residency between Lagos and Ibadan, the exhibition emerged from a deceptively simple question. What happens when history revolves around a single protagonist? More importantly, what happens to everyone else?
Rather than attempting to reconstruct the biography of Fela himself, Adjayi proposes another point of entry into one of Nigeria's most influential cultural histories. His project is neither documentary nor historical reconstruction. It is an artistic investigation into memory itself, exploring how archives preserve certain lives while allowing others to fade into silence.
This approach immediately distinguishes the exhibition from the growing number of artistic projects that revisit historical figures through archival material. Here, the archive is not treated as evidence capable of delivering definitive answers. Instead, it becomes a living terrain of uncertainty a place where fragments, absences and contradictions coexist. Photography, collage, textiles, moving image, recorded voices and printed documents are brought together not to reconstruct a complete narrative but to reveal the complexity of remembering.
The project began months before a single artwork entered the gallery. Between late April and the end of July 2026, Adjayi travelled repeatedly between Lagos and Ibadan, transforming the residency into an extended process of observation, field research and conversation. Museums, libraries, archives and cultural institutions became only one part of the investigation. Equally important were encounters with artists, photographers, researchers, cultural practitioners and individuals whose memories continued to circulate outside institutional collections.
The city itself gradually became an archive.
Walking through Lagos meant reading history not only in museum documents but also in walls layered with fading posters, newspaper kiosks, informal conversations, markets, music venues and neighbourhoods where the legacy of Fela remains embedded in everyday life. Kalakuta Museum offered historical records, photographs and material traces, while the New Afrika Shrine revealed how memory continues to exist as a living social practice rather than a fixed historical monument. Throughout the residency, Adjayi collected photographs, sound recordings, notes and visual impressions that slowly accumulated into a growing constellation of materials.
This process fundamentally shaped the exhibition. Research was never conceived as a preliminary stage that would eventually lead to finished artworks. Instead, research itself became the artwork's primary material. Every photograph produced during the residency remained in dialogue with archival documents. Every collage carried traces of historical images. Every textile piece extended questions first encountered inside museum collections. Rather than illustrating research, the exhibition exposed research as an ongoing artistic method.
The decision to work across multiple media reflects this understanding. Photography forms the visual foundation of the project, yet no single medium dominates the exhibition. Pigment prints, collages assembled from historical reproductions, screen-printed and DTF-printed textiles, archival documents, recorded testimonies, moving image and an artist's book coexist within the same spatial narrative. Together they suggest that memory rarely survives through one form alone. It moves between objects, voices, gestures and images, constantly changing shape as it is transmitted from one generation to another.
One of the most striking aspects of Adjayi's methodology is his refusal to position himself as a historian. The exhibition makes no claim to recover a complete truth about the women surrounding Fela. Instead, it acknowledges the limitations of both archives and artistic interpretation. Many historical records remain incomplete. Numerous names appear only briefly before disappearing again. Some stories survive through oral testimony rather than written documentation. Others have already been lost. Rather than concealing these absences, the exhibition gives them form.
In doing so, Fela, The Feminine Resistance asks viewers to reconsider what an archive can be. Is it merely a collection of preserved documents, or can it also include conversations, artistic gestures, photographs produced in the present and memories shared between people? Throughout the exhibition, this question remains deliberately unresolved. The archive is not presented as something closed, but as something continually rewritten through acts of looking, listening and remembering.
This openness becomes particularly significant within the Nigerian context, where contemporary artists increasingly engage with archives as sites of critical reflection rather than repositories of unquestionable authority. Adjayi's contribution joins a wider generation of African artistic practices that seek to complicate inherited narratives instead of replacing them with new certainties. His intervention, however, remains distinctly personal. Rather than speaking on behalf of the women whose histories inform the project, he constructs a space in which their presence can be sensed without claiming to speak for them.
As visitors entered New Culture Studio, they were therefore not confronted with a definitive statement about history. They entered a landscape of fragments one that required patience, attention and participation. The exhibition invited them to move slowly, to read, to listen, to return to individual works more than once. Memory, it suggested, is never encountered all at once. It unfolds gradually, often through repetition, hesitation and unexpected connections.
By the time the first visitors crossed the threshold on the evening of 26 July, the exhibition had already travelled a considerable distance. It had moved from archival boxes to photographic negatives, from conversations to printed textiles, from notebooks to gallery walls. What remained was not the conclusion of a research project but the beginning of a public conversation one that would continue to evolve through every visitor willing to engage with its questions. As visitors progressed through the gallery, it became increasingly clear that Fela, The Feminine Resistance was not conceived as a sequence of individual artworks but as a carefully orchestrated environment. Every object, every image and every sound occupied a precise place within a broader constellation of relationships. Rather than following a linear narrative, the exhibition unfolded through proximity. Photographs spoke to archival fragments; textiles echoed images printed on paper; recorded voices extended conversations initiated by the collages. Meaning emerged not from any single work but from the dialogue established between them.
The exhibition opened with a series of photographic works whose restrained visual language immediately established the tone of the project. Produced during the residency, these images resist the spectacular aesthetics often associated with representations of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Instead of attempting to illustrate an already familiar history, Adjayi employs photography as a medium of observation and attention. Portraits, architectural fragments and urban landscapes function less as documents than as visual meditations on absence, presence and remembrance. Their monochromatic palette reinforces this ambiguity, stripping away anecdotal detail in favour of texture, gesture and atmosphere.
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Among these works, The First Beat and She Kept the Fire Alive stand as quiet anchors within the exhibition. They do not claim to represent specific historical figures or events. Rather, they evoke emotional states and symbolic presences that resonate throughout the project. Their visual economy allows viewers to linger, encouraging a slower form of looking that contrasts sharply with the speed at which contemporary images are often consumed.
Photography alone, however, could never contain the complexity of the questions driving the project. It is through collage that the exhibition begins to destabilise the authority traditionally granted to photographic images. Historical newspapers, magazine reproductions, archival photographs and newly produced images are cut, layered and reassembled into compositions that refuse stable interpretation. Rather than presenting archives as transparent windows onto the past, these works expose the archive itself as a site of construction, selection and omission.
One of the exhibition's most compelling bodies of work consists of a series of intimate collages produced on Fine Art Rag paper. Works such as Ilé Ìrántí (House of Memory), Orin Náà Ṣì Wà (The Song Still Remains) and Ìrántí Tí Kò Parí (Unfinished Memory) reveal Adjayi's sustained engagement with archival material collected throughout the residency. Newspaper clippings, historical photographs and documentary fragments coexist with graphic interventions and contemporary photographic elements. Rather than concealing the seams between these materials, the artist deliberately preserves them. Torn edges, overlapping surfaces and visible interruptions become formal devices that remind viewers that history itself is always assembled from fragments. The large triptych occupies a particularly significant position within the exhibition. Three black-and-white compositions juxtapose archival photographs of women associated with Kalakuta Republic with anonymous masked faces. The visual tension created by this encounter is striking. The masks simultaneously conceal and reveal, transforming individual identity into a broader reflection on visibility itself. Are these women remembered as historical subjects, or have they become symbols through which history negotiates its own silences? The work never answers this question directly. Instead, it insists that recognition remains incomplete, inviting viewers to confront the unstable boundary between documentation and imagination.
Textile works introduce another important layer to the exhibition. Rather than treating fabric as a secondary support for photographic reproduction, Adjayi approaches textile as a carrier of cultural memory in its own right. Produced through screen printing and DTF processes developed during the residency in collaboration with local printmakers, these works extend the project beyond conventional photographic practice. The shift from paper to fabric transforms the image physically and conceptually. What was once viewed on a gallery wall begins to recall clothing, banners, domestic interiors and the everyday circulation of images within lived experience. In this way, memory becomes something that can be worn, folded, transported and inhabited.
At the centre of the exhibition, visitors encountered a research table unlike those often found in museum displays. Rather than functioning as supplementary documentation, the table formed an integral part of the exhibition itself. Books consulted during the residency, archival reproductions, notebooks and printed materials remained accessible to visitors, encouraging prolonged engagement with the research process behind the finished works. Nearby, the artist's book extended this invitation. Its pages did not merely reproduce exhibited images but offered another mode of reading the project, allowing photographs, texts and archival fragments to coexist within a more intimate temporal rhythm. Many visitors spent considerable time turning its pages, moving back and forth between the publication and the surrounding installation. Perhaps the exhibition's most evocative gesture appeared in its moving-image installation. Field Notes: Fela, The Feminine Resistance avoided the immersive spectacle that often characterises contemporary video art. Instead, a single-channel projection was cast onto suspended A4 sheets bearing the names of the women associated with Kalakuta Republic. The projected image never remained fixed. Light drifted across paper that responded subtly to air currents within the gallery. Names appeared briefly before dissolving into moving shadows. Recorded voices, ambient sounds collected during field research and fragments of documentary footage combined to produce an experience that was deliberately unstable. Rather than illustrating archival material, the projection animated it, suggesting that memory itself is always in motion.
The installation transformed the gallery into something closer to a working archive than a conventional exhibition space. Visitors did not simply observe objects displayed behind institutional authority; they participated in an ongoing process of assembling relationships between images, voices and historical traces. The exhibition therefore resisted the closure often associated with historical narratives. Instead of presenting conclusions, it opened possibilities for further questioning.
This curatorial strategy reflects one of the project's most significant achievements. Throughout Fela, The Feminine Resistance, the archive is never treated as evidence capable of resolving historical uncertainty. On the contrary, Adjayi repeatedly demonstrates that archives are partial, contingent and deeply human constructions. What survives is rarely complete. What disappears is often impossible to recover. Artistic practice cannot repair these absences, but it can make them visible.
In doing so, the exhibition shifts attention away from the authority of historical documentation toward the ethics of remembering. The works do not ask viewers to admire the archive. They ask them to inhabit its incompleteness. It is precisely within these spaces of uncertainty that the exhibition finds its emotional and intellectual force.
As the late afternoon light filtered through the windows of New Culture Studio on 26 July 2026, the gallery gradually shifted from a quiet exhibition space into a place of encounter. The works, carefully installed after weeks of preparation, were no longer waiting in silence. Visitors began to arrive in small groups, filling the gallery with conversations that would continue well beyond the opening reception.
The audience reflected the diversity of Ibadan's cultural landscape. Visual artists, photographers, writers, feminist activists, academics, students and members of the general public moved through the exhibition at their own pace. Some had followed the residency from its early stages, while others were discovering the project for the first time. Their different backgrounds shaped the ways in which the exhibition was experienced, creating multiple readings rather than a single shared interpretation.
The conversations that unfolded throughout the evening revealed the richness of the exhibition's subject matter. Some visitors spoke about the women whose names appeared throughout the project, recalling personal memories, historical accounts or previous research. Others reflected on the broader question of visibility, asking why certain figures become central to cultural memory while others remain largely absent from official narratives. For younger visitors, the exhibition opened new perspectives on the history of Kalakuta Republic, encouraging them to look beyond the familiar image of Fela toward the wider community that surrounded him.
The exhibition space itself contributed significantly to these exchanges. Rather than separating artworks from supporting materials, the installation invited visitors to move constantly between aesthetic experience and historical inquiry. Photographs led naturally toward archival documents; the artist's book encouraged viewers to revisit images they had already encountered on the walls; the listening station introduced voices that extended the visual narrative into another sensory register. Every movement through the gallery became an act of connecting fragments rather than following a predetermined route.
Particularly striking was the attention given to the artist's book. In many exhibitions, publications function as supplementary material that visitors browse briefly before moving on. Here, the book became one of the central points of engagement. Individuals and small groups gathered around its pages, discussing photographs, reading texts aloud and comparing printed images with the works displayed nearby. In these moments, the publication ceased to be merely a catalogue; it became another exhibition space, one that visitors could navigate through touch, reading and conversation.
As the evening progressed, the atmosphere became increasingly collaborative. The opening reception evolved into a forum where artists, curators, photographers and researchers exchanged ideas about artistic research, archival practice and contemporary African photography. Rather than remaining within the conventional boundaries of a vernissage, the event created opportunities for meaningful dialogue between practitioners from different disciplines. Discussions moved effortlessly between the artworks themselves and broader questions concerning cultural heritage, gender, visual representation and historical responsibility.
Three days later, on 29 July, these conversations continued during the public Artist Talk held inside the gallery. If the opening had invited visitors to encounter the exhibition through observation, the Artist Talk offered an opportunity to enter the research process behind it. Once again, the audience reflected the diversity of Ibadan's cultural community. Photographers, visual artists, writers, feminist thinkers, students, cultural practitioners and members of the public gathered to discuss not only the exhibition but also the methods that had produced it.
Rather than presenting a formal lecture, Adjayi approached the discussion as an open reflection on artistic research. He spoke about the experience of moving between Lagos and Ibadan, working with incomplete archives, conducting field research and collaborating with local artists during the printing process. Particular attention was given to the ethical challenges of representing lives that remain only partially documented. Rather than claiming to recover forgotten histories in their entirety, the artist emphasised the importance of acknowledging absence as an integral part of both historical research and artistic practice.
This perspective resonated strongly with the audience. Questions quickly moved beyond technical aspects of photography toward larger issues concerning authorship, memory and representation. How should contemporary artists engage with archives that remain fragmentary? Can photography function simultaneously as artistic practice and historical inquiry? What responsibilities accompany the act of constructing visual narratives from incomplete sources? These questions transformed the discussion into something far richer than a presentation of finished work. The Artist Talk became a collective reflection on the possibilities and limitations of artistic research itself.
Following the discussion, many participants joined a guided walkthrough of the exhibition. Revisiting the works after hearing about their development fundamentally altered the viewing experience. Details that had initially appeared purely formal acquired new significance when understood in relation to the research process. The suspended sheets carrying the names of the Kalakuta Queens, the layered collages, the experimental textiles and the monochrome photographic series all revealed additional dimensions once placed within the broader context of the residency.
The evening concluded not with a closing statement but with continued conversation. Small groups remained inside the gallery long after the formal programme had ended, exchanging impressions, discussing future collaborations and reflecting on the questions raised by the exhibition. A group photograph taken at the end of the event captured more than the participants gathered in the room; it recorded the temporary community that had formed around a shared commitment to thinking critically about memory, archives and artistic practice.
Perhaps this was one of the exhibition's most significant achievements. Rather than presenting history as a completed narrative, Fela, The Feminine Resistance created conditions for dialogue. The project extended beyond the artworks themselves, becoming a platform through which different generations of artists, researchers and audiences could reconsider how cultural memory is produced and shared. In doing so, the exhibition demonstrated that its most enduring legacy might not reside solely in the photographs on the walls or the objects displayed in the gallery, but in the conversations it generated among those who encountered them.
What distinguishes the project is its refusal to replace one historical narrative with another. The exhibition does not attempt to produce a definitive history of the women surrounding Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, nor does it claim to recover every forgotten voice. Such ambitions would ignore the very conditions that make archives incomplete in the first place. Instead, Fela, The Feminine Resistance accepts uncertainty as both an ethical and aesthetic position. The gaps within the historical record are not concealed; they become part of the exhibition's visual language. Missing names, fragmented photographs, interrupted testimonies and layered documents all remind viewers that memory is rarely whole. This approach also expands the possibilities of photography itself. Throughout the exhibition, photographs never function merely as records of reality. They operate alongside collage, textile, sound and moving image, creating a visual vocabulary in which documentation and imagination remain inseparable. Photography becomes less a means of proving that something happened than a way of asking how histories continue to shape the present. In Adjayi's practice, the camera does not close an investigation; it opens one. Equally significant is the project's commitment to public engagement. The residency did not end with the installation of artworks inside the gallery. Workshops with children, conversations during the opening reception and the Artist Talk all formed part of the same research process. These encounters demonstrated that knowledge is not produced solely within archives or studios but also through dialogue, shared experience and collective interpretation. The exhibition therefore extended beyond its physical display, becoming a temporary public space where artistic practice, historical inquiry and community participation intersected. The choice of New Culture Studio as the exhibition venue reinforced this dimension. Throughout the residency, the space functioned not only as a gallery but as a place of production, experimentation and exchange. Within this environment, the exhibition remained connected to the everyday cultural life of Ibadan rather than isolated from it. Visitors did not simply observe finished works; they encountered the traces of an ongoing process that had unfolded across cities, institutions and conversations over several months. For Nigerian audiences, the exhibition offered an opportunity to revisit one of the country's most familiar cultural histories from an unexpected perspective. For international audiences, it suggested a different way of approaching African archives one that resists both nostalgia and historical certainty. Rather than monumentalising the past, Fela, The Feminine Resistance insists that history remains a living field of relationships continuously reshaped by those who return to it with new questions.
Ultimately, the exhibition demonstrates that artistic research is not simply a preparatory phase preceding the production of artworks. Research becomes the artwork's very condition of existence. Every photograph, collage, textile and installation carries within it the traces of conversations, journeys, archival discoveries and encounters that cannot be separated from the objects eventually presented inside the gallery. The exhibition therefore asks viewers not only to look at images but also to consider the labour of looking itself—the patience required to observe, to listen, to compare fragments and to remain attentive to what history has left unresolved.
When Fela, The Feminine Resistance closed on 30 July 2026, the studio gradually returned to silence. The photographs were removed from the walls, the suspended sheets bearing the names of the Kalakuta Queens were carefully packed away, and the research table was dismantled. Yet the project itself did not conclude with the closing of the exhibition. Like the archives from which it emerged, it continues to exist through circulation: in the artist's book, in future presentations, in conversations initiated during the residency and in the memories carried by those who encountered the work. Perhaps this is the exhibition's most enduring achievement. It does not ask audiences to remember Fela differently. It asks them to reconsider how memory itself is constructed—and whose lives continue to shape history long after the spotlight has moved elsewhere.
In the end, Fela, The Feminine Resistance is less an exhibition about the past than a proposition for the future. It reminds us that archives are never complete, that photographs never speak alone, and that every generation inherits the responsibility of asking new questions of the histories it receives. In Ibadan, those questions found a temporary home inside the walls of New Culture Studio. Long after the exhibition closed, they continue to resonate beyond them.
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