Talking Objects. Of Narrative Objects and Collection Narratives
Conversation between Azu Nwagbogu and the curators Isabel Raabe and Dr. Mahret Ifeoma Kupka
as part of the exhibition Georges Adéagbo
La lumière qui fait le bonheur...

In cooperation with the series TALKING OBJECTS LAB

7 July 2021, 7 pm
Live-Stream
In English

TALKING OBJECTS LAB is a series of events on the African continent and in Germany curated by Isabel Raabe and Dr. Mahret Ifeoma Kupka that explores the question of what knowledge can be today beyond European knowledge systems. Five thematic fields are foregrounded: decolonizing memory, decolonizing knowledge, the re-evaluation of objects from colonial contexts, empowerment through and opportunities for artistic perspectives, as well as questions about classical museum forms of preservation and presentation. In the live streamed conversation, Azu Nwagbogu will introduce the Home Museum Lagos, which he co-founded, a private collection of photographs gathered through an Open Call as part of the LagosPhoto Festival. The discussion will revolve around the question of how collections can make objects tell a story. Whose story do the objects tell? What influence does a collection narrative have on the meaning of the singular object? And can this relationship be changed when collections are created in collective processes?

Azu Nwagbogu is the founder and director of the African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non- profit organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria that is dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African arts and artists. Nwagbogu also serves as founder and director of the LagosPhoto Festival. Nwagbogu was the interim director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in South Africa from April 2018 to August 2019. He created Art Base Africa, a virtual space to discover and learn about contemporary Art from the African continent and the diaspora. Nwagbogu is on the jury of major arts awards and committees such as the Dutch Doc, the POPCAP Photography Awards, the World Press Photo, the Prisma Photography Award (2015), the Greenpeace Photo Award (2016), the New York Times Portfolio Review (2017-18), the W. Eugene Smith Award (2018), Photo España (2018), Lensculture and Magnum. Nwagbogu also works as an independent curator and culture critic.

Isabel Raabe is a curator and project developer from Berlin. She studied Contemporary Dance and later cultural management and has curated numerous interdisciplinary international art and cultural projects. She is interested in curatorial and artistic strategies that deconstruct Western perspectives and traditions of thought. She recently initiated RomArchive – Digital Archive of the Roma, funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, which won the European Heritage Award 2019 and the Grimme Online Award 2020. Isabel Raabe initiated the project TALKING OBJECTS, which consists of the TALKING OBJECTS LAB and the TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE, a digital archive for decolonial knowledge production that is set to be launched in 2024.

Dr. Mahret Ifeoma Kupka is an art scholar, freelance writer and, since 2013, Curator of Fashion, Body and Performance at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main. In her exhibitions, lectures, texts, and interdisciplinary projects, she addresses issues of the future, memory culture, representation, and the decolonization of art and cultural practices in Europe and on the African continent. She is a member of the advisory board of the Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland e.V. and a spokesperson for the Neue Deutsche Museumsmacher*innen. Mahret Ifeoma Kupka is part of the curatorial team of the TALKING OBJECTS LAB.