The Lagos Arts Scene

There is a lot happening this weekend on the arts scene of Lagos. And I am in the middle of it all as an artiste and arts manager.

That Sunday morning, Nigerians woke up to the shocking and horrific news of the killing of innocent children and defenceless women in Jos again. We have seen the horrifying pictures on the pages of newspapers, on television and on our computers via the internet of human beings dismembered and their guts spewed out.

This orgy of mindless killings and violence against women and children, indeed against anyone, only diminish our humanity and should be condemned in the strongest terms.

Rhymes and Reasons for JOS is a literary protest – an avenue for creative people, celebrities and citizens who shape opinions and set trends to lend their voices and speak up against the massacre in Jos and other parts of the country.

Rhymes and reasons for Jos has no political or religious undertone; it is the convocation of people who believe in the power of the word in whatever form – spoken, written, rapped or sung.

Come with a poem.
Come with a story.
Come with verses and choruses.

Please join other literary minds and celebrities to add your respected voice to this campaign against this man’s inhumanity to man.

Date:Friday, March 19 2010

Venue:Bogobiri House,9 Maitama Sule, Off Awolowo Road (by Falomo Shopping Complex), SW Ikoyi, Lagos.

Time:6.00pm – 8.00pm prompt.

The African Artists' Foundation (AAF) in partnership with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Schlumberger Nigeria Ltd. present a female-only exhibition titled "50 Years Ahead; Through the Eyes of Nigerian Women", in commemoration of Nigeria's golden jubilee. Through this exhibition, the AAF is drawing the focus to Nigerian women, giving them a platform to express their vision of our great Nation, 50 years ahead.

Join us as we celebrate our women in the premier edition of a series of annual women artists' exhibitions at the Civic Center, on the 20th of March 2010.

For more information please contact the African Artists' Foundation on 01-7454750, or send an email to info@africanartists.org or visit: http://www.africanartists.org

The Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) is honoured to celebrate Mabel Segun at 80 with an ARTHOUSE FORUM, one of the prime programmes of the organisation. Though belated, the organisation insisted on setting up this celebration as a mark of appreciation of her unquantifiable contribution to the birth and progress of Nigerian contemporary Literature and the Arts.

The Forum, which has the theme “Promoting a Closer Cooperation between Our Literature and Our Motion Picture” will hold on March 21, 2010 at 2.00 p.m. prompt and the venue is National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos. The theme is inspired by what is consider as one of the watermarks of her illustrious career, which seeks at all times to establish a link between the various arms of the arts.

As you already know, the Arthouse Forum is periodically organized to discuss hot burner issues in the arts.

The above-stated theme is to allow the panel of discussants and the audience to debate the apparent absence of cooperation between Nigeria’s Home Video industry and her Literature in view of the leading positions of both forms within their respective artistic traditions in Africa. Some observers have argued that the younger art, the Home Video industry, is the loser for not having related more closely with our Literature in view of the quality of the latter and the pattern in other cultures with older motion picture industries.

Can Nigeria’s motion picture producers learn something from our works of Literature? Is the ‘text-to-screen’ model the next breather that the motion picture industry badly needs to mount its next growth curve?

The discussion promises to be interesting and enriching as discussants will be drawn from both industries as well as informed observers of the arts.