A city of many stories: Tega Gbenedio explores the identity of Makoko

Visual artist Tega Gbenedio alongside her one of photographs at A City of Many Stories, Freedom Park, Lagos

From yellow danfo buses on busy roads to wooden canoes crossing its waterways, Lagos is a city that expresses itself in its everyday life.

Such familiar scenes inspired If A City of Many Stories, a group exhibition organised by Eko Arts Group, which was held at the Art Space, Freedom Park, Lagos from May 6 to 10, 2023. A collection of artists with different visions of the city came together to explore how people, places and activities shape Lagos; the exhibition attracted more than 200 guests, according to the organisers.

Through their individual works, the artists offered different perspectives on Lagos’s cultural character, drawing attention to familiar scenes and the communities behind them.

Among the featured artists was the visual artist Tega Gbenedio, whose photograph explored the wooden canoe as a recognisable symbol of Makoko, a waterfront community in Lagos.

From a moving cab crossing the Third Mainland Bridge, Tega Gbenedio captured scenes of wooden canoes navigating the waters of Makoko, some transporting goods and others carrying out the everyday activities that sustain the waterfront community.

Among these moments was a lone figure steering a canoe loaded with wood across a wide stretch of water. Taken in passing, the photographs offered glimpses of life along the waterfront, revealing the movement, livelihoods and daily rhythms that shape Makoko’s identity.

For Gbenedio, the canoe was more than just transportation. Just as the yellow danfo bus is so closely associated with Lagos, the wooden canoe has become part of Makoko’s visual identity, reflecting the community’s relationship with its waterways and the way of life that has developed around them.

The exhibited photograph also revealed a subtle contrast between movement along the busy bridge and life on the water below, offering two different views of the same city.

Visitor Opeyemi commented on the work, “I feel the identity of Makoko is somewhat overlooked, and I think this photograph is powerful because it shows how something as ordinary as a canoe can say so much about a community.”

Gbenedio’s contribution complemented the exhibition’s wider exploration of Lagos, highlighting how ordinary scenes and objects can become associated with particular places and people.

All of the works represented a city with stories that go beyond its familiar places and that manifest in the people, communities and everyday experiences that make Lagos what it is.