Lagos elevates Nigerian graffiti at street mural festival celebrating the city and its people

Pedestrians walk past a mural on Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue ahead of the Lagos street art festival. The 'Lagos, legendary city, city of dreams' theme imposed on the 16 artists deliberately overlooks the country's challenges and celebrates the city's vibrancy and the resilience of its inhabitants. Photo / Toyin Adedokun, AFP

Spray paint and brushes in hand, the artists focused on their murals, tuning out the chaotic symphony of car horns and swirls of exhaust from the Lagos traffic behind them.

They put the finishing touches to their contributions for the inaugural Lagos Street Art Festival, which opens today and promises to turn the mega-city into an “open-air gallery”, according to the organisers.

It is a novel promise in a country where street art and graffiti remain niche practices.

It also offers a chance to add colour to the concrete jungle that more than 20 million Nigerians call home, with works featuring expansive cityscapes, kaleidoscopic patterns evoking African textiles and proud women in bright headwraps.

“Lagos is a place where we have joy,” artist Ashaolu Oluwafemi, 34, told AFP, standing in front of his mural depicting a woman dancing, eyes closed and arms raised.

“There’s joy, there’s struggle. Even in the mood of your struggles, you have to be joyful. You have to make yourself happy.”

Joy in the face of difficulty is a recurring thread touched on by Nigerian artists, stretching back to legendary singer Fela Kuti’s Shuffering and Shmiling - which has itself become something of a motto in a country that is both Africa’s most populous and one of its most unequal.

“Legendary Lagos, City of Dreams” is the theme of this year’s show, daring artists to look beyond the crime and poverty that haunt the city, and instead cast their eye towards the grit, resilience, and joy that define the people who live there.

“I’m just telling how Lagos people love to party, love to go to parties, love to eat food. And they just love to be colourful,” said Babalola Oluwafemi, a Nigerian artist who came in from Manchester, England, to paint a massive work of a woman accompanied by a peacock - a bird often used to symbolise beauty and pride in Nigerian art.

Despite a wave of mass kidnappings in the north of the country, sparking President Bola Tinubu to declare a “nationwide security emergency”, the party hasn’t stopped in Lagos, the cultural and economic capital of southern Nigeria.

In fact, it’s just beginning: the street art festival coincides with “Detty December”, the annual pilgrimage of Nigerians and those in the diaspora to visit family and friends in Lagos over the holidays.

‘Evolving’ art scene

Despite being a west African arts hub - with numerous galleries, museums and a dynamic local scene - Lagos has not embraced street art as a part of its urban landscape on the scale of other major African cities such as Dakar, Cotonou or Cape Town.

But there’s clearly an appetite.

“I’ve never painted anything like this before,” said Babalola Oluwafemi, 32.

“Everything in Lagos is different. A whole lot of cars, a whole lot of traffic - a whole lot of comments from people passing by [saying] ‘Nice work’.”

Down the street, the pollution-blackened, barbed-wire topped walls of a housing complex now burst with colour.

“The visibility is not too strong compared to other African nations,” painter Ernest Ibe said of street art in Lagos.

“So, it’s a challenge, but the country is evolving. We are beginning to understand the impact of social murals and how it affects us socially and in our environment in general.”

Osa Okunkpolor - known as Osa Seven - a Nigerian graffiti artist who helped organise the festival, told AFP he ultimately wants to put Lagos “on the street art map”.

“Art shouldn’t be constrained or restricted to just gallery spaces. We believe that art is something that everybody should experience,” he said.

-Agence France-Presse