5th Timeless Memories connects Soyinka, Fagunwa

One of the visual art events of the 24th Lagos Book and Art Festival will celebrate master storytellers D.0. Fagunwa and Professor Wole Soyinka.

Timeless Memories: Elastic Effects, a visual arts exhibition and staple at the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF), will open on Tuesday, November 15, at Kongi’s Harvest, Freedom Park, Lagos Island.

Curated by Oludamola Adebowale, the show is one of the activities of the 2022 LABAF themed ‘Pathways to the Future’ opening on November 14. The exhibition, with ‘Connecting the lines between Soyinka and Fagunwa’ as its theme, is a tribute to the works and legacies of the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka.

The Curator added that the show “is also a celebration of Wole Soyinka at 88”. For this year’s edition, the fifth, he has prepared a traditional Yoruba-themed installation exhibition and a literary discourse based on the classic literature, ‘Forest of A Thousand Daemons: A Hunter’s Saga’ originally written in Yoruba by the late D.O Fagunwa but translated into English by Prof Soyinka in 1968.

Adebowale further explained: “The dynamism of this project keeps changing annually. The more we interrogate the works of Prof Soyinka, the more I create more intriguing and creative ways of presenting his works artistically. It’s been an absolute pleasure and delight to stand in this gap to work on the huge body of works’ Kongi’ has blessed us with.”

‘Timeless Memories’, he also noted, will interrogate ‘Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irumole’, which tells a fantastic story of a hunter caught in a mystical forest filled with a thousand demons.

Continuing on the choice of the book written in the 1930s, Adebowale said, “Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irumole is acclaimed as the first full-length novel published in Yoruba. In celebrating the genius of D.O Fagunwa and bringing contemporary art installation and interpretation to his intriguing work, we would be recreating the book’s essence in an art exhibition, installation and multimedia project.

“D. O. Fagunwa was an author who told stories with a fantastic tilt as far back as the 1930s. He documented what can be regarded as fairytales heavy with elements of Yoruba folklore – spirits, gods, magic, and more. His skilful use of Christian concepts and traditional proverbs mark him as one who had a healthy knowledge of classical Yoruba ethos and spirituality. He did all these before the rise and popularity of fantasy and magic realism as sub-genres in literature. This is a master deserving of celebration.

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“The installation will involve recreating an enchanted forest with recyclable materials. We will deploy a variety of indigenous masks representing a thousand demons to symbolize the essence of Yoruba spiritualism and the mythical depths of Fagunwa’s literary brilliance.”

There will also be audio readings of excerpts from the book and voice-over excerpts from the original Yoruba text and Soyinka’s English translation.

LABAF is a week-long culture picnic that has run annually since 1999. It features reading sessions, book conversations, visual arts, publishers’ forum, drama, poetry and live music. This 24th edition is dedicated to master artist Professor Bruce Onobrakpeya.