projects - Sharjah Art Foundation

Remi Kuforiji’s work explores the intersection of cartography, racial politics and coloniality.

Water No Get Enemy: Counter-Cartographies of Diaspora (2023)

Remi Kuforiji
Water No Get Enemy: Counter-Cartographies of Diaspora
2023
2-channel video, colour, sound and costumes
16 minutes
Credits: Hafsa Adan (voice actor); Sunday ‘Valu’ Obiajulu Ozegbe (performer); Sunday ‘Valu’ Obiajulu Ozegbe, Sokari Douglas Camp, Ayọ̀ Akínwándé and Dr David Pratten (interviewees); Olu Kuforiji, Samuel Udoh (videographer); M’Bark (costume maker); and Dele Adeyemo, Ibiye Camp and Dámaso Randulfe (ADS2 Tutors)
Produced by Sharjah Art Foundation; developed as part of the ADS2 programme, Demonic Shores (2020/21), Royal College of Art, London, in conversation with Dele Adeyemo’s video installation Wey Dey Move: Imagining New Worlds through Dance & Masquerade
Courtesy of the artist

Overview

Remi Kuforiji’s work explores the intersection of cartography, racial politics and coloniality. The narrative film essay, Water No Get Enemy: Counter-Cartographies of Diaspora (2023) relays the story of Wale, a British-born Nigerian navigating his fragmented understanding of Nigerian culture and history. After the 1956 discovery of oil in the Niger Delta, transnational corporations systematically partitioned the wetlands for private enterprise. Calling into question the ramifications of extractive architectural technologies, Kuforiji proposes a reorientation of our relationship to resource use, informed by Indigenous epistemologies and Kalabari masquerade, a traditional school of Nigerian performance.