CHARLES OKEREKE: The 'Homecoming' Series

“Homecoming” (2011-date)

With massive urban migration from other parts of Nigeria, the mutative capacity of Lagos becomes unpredictable, as much pressure is impacted on the environment and infrastructure.

The ‘Homecoming’ Series depicts the drudgery that is a daily part of life in Lagos, as exhausted ‘homecomers’ arrive at dusk from tedious jobs and seemingly unending traffic jams.

The pressure of Lagos could be akin to a vortex that sucks one in with a gruesome choking and suffocation. The psyche of the average ‘Lagosian’ is akin to a pressure-house as the city either strengthens and toughens the stronger or totally crushes and incapacitates the weak.

The series tries to capture these fleeting moments of homecoming - the constant surge and frenzied movements; the chaotic dazzling of head lamps against sluggish tired bodies; the night traders and hustlers alike negotiating with customers for late night shopping; street food vendors lay their tables for hungry tired workers and prostitutes alike with their glittering and seductive dresses seek for potential customers to calm frayed nerves, if the price is right.

This nuance is not easily perceptible but could be felt, by sudden explosion of tempers among commuters merged with coarse bellows of routes from the bus conductors.

One can safely assume that with this sort of constant pressure in the city of Lagos, a new breed of people may be evolving through adaptation to a never slowing current, to which traffic jams or go slow are an ingredient to the mutating process which remains constant.

[click on image to enlarge]