Artist Statement

The project, which fuses staged studio and street portraiture and archives (newspaper headlines scans), explores, investigates and subverts some of the defining feature of memes. The photos can either be seen as Prints or Animated GIFs. Moreover, this part of a broader art project, “E-Go-Better?” which explores protest as an art form by using Social Media and Installation Art. The underlying idea is to question the effectiveness of ‘virtual’ protest by investigating the possibilities that modern technology present to ordinary people.

• Jeremiah Ikongio (Nigeria) is an emerging artist, who focuses his work on the urban metropolis, modernity, gentrification, identity, politics and activism. He has adopted a methodology that relates to notions of archiving and the archival. His work, which includes several collaborations as well as individual pieces, has been shown in Manchester, Bamako, Berlin, Lagos, Munich, Cape Town and Mexico City. Using New Media and Performance Art, his works include interactive (and web-based) artistic projects, like a prototype participatory intervention for public buses in 2016 produced by British Council/Watershed UK's #PlayableCityLagos and has been awarded Starke Stücke international research residency for 2018/2019.    jereikongio.com