FICTION
Parenthesis
“The party unfolded as parties in Lagos do—by accretion rather than plan. People arrived with bottles, with opinions about the present government that they suspected they would moderate over wine, with proposals about art and pedagogy and the only real subject that matters in public: reputation.”
Bimpé
“Nettled by the world of adults, they settled into one they had created between them. Here, where it was easy to ignore the solidity of the world, they dreamt dreams that, as adults, they could dismiss as silly but which, to them now, meant everything.”
NONFICTION
Sights and Sounds of Bubu Music
“These images by Abdul Hamid Kanu are patient, tactile, and rhythm-aware. They testify to a practice that refuses to be reduced either to nostalgia or to spectacle. They insist that cultural survival is never merely a matter of preservation but of continued use, of repetition, of a million small acts of remembering performed by mouths and hands.”
A Port and A Portal
“Yet, I am inspired by the correspondence between the two photographs. In both, there are two people united by an activity, an action, or even an act. In the former photograph, the pause and the pose—perhaps at the urging of the photographer—once again asserts photography’s exaltation of the moment into a monument; we are even made to stand still as statues. If in the latter photograph no one has struck a pose, there is still an evident rest and repose.”
Love, or the Lack Thereof
“Tradition is an indifferent god. Like love, that one does not see it, or see it whole, does not mean it ceases to exist; if it is not possible to see, like one’s soul, it is often hidden from view, like one’s sole.”
Photographs by Ayo Akinyemi
“These photographs appear unsure of themselves; they evince a certain uncertainty on their surface, and they do not readily tell us anything, not even a single phrase—which is a given in a world such as this, since shadows do not speak.”