Phyllis Galembo

Phyllis Galembo, the award-winning photographer, professor at the State University of New York and the collector of Helloween costumes, has been capturing the exotic patterns of Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Zambia and Jamaica for over twenty years. Her subject is mostly the masquerade in religious rituals and local festivals, carnivale costumes, art and nature, the transformation of men, the visual culture in West Africa, and also Helloween.

Source: Feature Shoot

Her depiction of these masquerades calls into question the role that the body and its inherent spirit has on the African City. When a masquerade is conjured a process of becoming occurs–the body is transformed from its normative human characteristics and takes on the qualities of the spirit invoked. The proverbial costumes of the masquerade implicate on the body politic and spiritual qualities of the African City. Masquerade serve as a means to protest, to speak, to give voice to the silenced.

Could the spirit of the Masquerade be used as a tool to empower the marginalized? We at The BAK Lab would like your feedback.

# THEORY /// Heterotopia

What if an African Market like the late great Oshodi of Lagos, Nigeria met with “any-mall USA”

Thoughts? Opinons?

# MARKET /// Mr. Basinski Brings Lagos to New York

Sean Basinski is a Fulbright Scholar who has been an outspoken advocate for street venders in New York. His investigation of New York street venders is the result of his years researching the overwhelming markets in Lagos Nigeria.

Source:New York Magazine

# MARKET /// China Safari

The Africans Looking to Make it in China

Some Africans have chosen to subvert the ChinAfrica relationship by setting up shop in Guangzhou. Will they prove to make more profit than they would in markets at home?

Source: CNN: Marketplace Africa

# MARKET /// Listening There: Scenes from Ghana

Listening There: Scenes from Ghana is a video compilation from the travel research of Mabel O. Wilson & Peter Tolkin. The video explores Kejetia Central Market, Kumasi and former American Embassy, Accra. In this cross comparison, we see that the rich and poor of Ghana have continued to occupy separate worlds — worlds nonetheless interdependent. Ghana’s modernist architectural icons now sit within fields of hermetically sealed air-conditioned towers skinned in purple, blue and gray reflective glass. These generic buildings house the finance institutions and hotels, the communication, energy and trading companies that tether Ghana to the global economy. They accommodate the organizational conduits that connect to China, India, the Americas and elsewhere, and that channel the goods that flood the streets and fill the markets of regional centers like Kumasi.

At every corner, cities are peppered with cellular communication networks and with brightly colored kiosks vending phone cards. And in between the commercial and governmental districts, like an unstoppable flow, seep the metal-roofed slums housing the millions who’ve journeyed from country to city seeking work. Roadways are jammed with people moving from home to work and back again

Source: Listening There

# DESIGN /// Icons of A Metropolis

Ade Adekola’s Icons of A Metropolis series captures the grain and characters of Lagos, the African City.

Source: Icons Of A Metropolis