Dig Where You Stand – From Coast to Coast
Iteration 3
Curated by Azu Nwagbogu
Artists: Barthélémy Toguo, Ibrahim Mahama, Renzo Martens
Opening August 7 th 2024 | 6pm – 9pm
Exhibition from August 8 th to September 7 th 2024
Rua Damasceno Monteiro, 12 r/c, 1170-112 Lisbon
Ground floor / Gallery
Free entry
© Ibrahim Mahama
Building on the conceptual foundation laid by “Dig Where You Stand – From Coast to Coast” the third iteration of this exhibition series, hosted at HANGAR in Lisbon, Portugal, forges a new path into geographical and thematic territories. Venturing beyond the African continent for the first time, this exhibition explores the complex interplay of labor, exploitation, and the global movement of peoples and ideas that shape our collective rhythm and composition.
Portugal, with its pivotal role in the transatlantic slave trade, serves as a poignant backdrop for an exploration that seeks not only to confront but also to heal and reimagine. The guiding theme for this iteration, “Memories of Discord” aims to unravel the discordant lullabies of history, acknowledging the scars of exploitation while also sowing the seeds for a future where those same narratives give rise to new possibilities for understanding and engagement.
Featuring the works of Ibrahim Mahama, Barthélémy Toguo, and Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise, this exhibition presents a multidimensional chorus that spans continents and epochs. It re-composes the notes of a shared history that, while marked by exploitation and suffering, also embodies the resilience and creativity of the human spirit.
With support from @dg.artes
Structure financed by the Portuguese Republic – Culture / Directorate-General of Arts
Dig Where You Stand – From Coast to Coast
Dig Where You Stand, is a series of traveling exhibitions from coast to coast offering a radical shift by introducing a new methodology of engaging with capital both in the art world and the broader economy on the African continent. Central themes of all exhibits are decolonization, restitution, and repatriation. The third Edition of Dig Where You Stand takes place in Lisbon, Portugal in collaboration with HANGAR. The title of the exhibition, Dig Where You Stand, is inspired by a Swedish author, Sven Lindqvist, who drew upon public history campaigns in post-revolutionary China. The idea encourages communities to research and counter the historical narrative from the perspective of those who have been marginalized, empowering them to reclaim their own history.
Dig Where You Stand travels through coastal African cities, with a focus on cities with points of no return, emphasizing themes of voyage, displacement, migration, labor, and the circulation of goods and commodities. By examining contemporary art’s agency within this discourse beyond institutional critique and Afro-futurist imaginaries, the exhibition engages present-day realities shaped by current post-pandemic new world realities. DWYS embraces the challenges posed by the difficulties of travel across Africa and the Diaspora. By scrupulously documenting and addressing these issues, we aim to develop a toolkit for future mapping of art world possibilities and realities concerning Africa and its diasporas. The project seeks to involve local communities in generative strategies of intervention, cooperation, activism, exchange, and pedagogy. It becomes a discursive platform for raising questions and initiating conversations about local realities, expropriation and displacement policies, as well as broader issues related to imperialism, privilege, access, and class.
Azu Nwagbogu is an internationally acclaimed curator, interested in evolving new models of engagement with questions of decolonization, restitution, and repatriation. In his practice, the exhibition becomes an experimental site for reflection, civic engagement, ecology and repatriation – both tangible and symbolic. Nwagbogu is the Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non- profit organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria. He also serves as Founder and Director of LagosPhoto Festival, an annual international arts festival of photography held in Lagos. He is the publisher of Art Base Africa, a virtual space to discover and learn about contemporary art from Africa and its diasporas.
In 2023, he was named an Explorer at Large by the National Geographic Society, recognizing his commitment to exploring and documenting the world’s diverse cultures and environments. He has also been appointed the curator of the first ever Republic of Benin pavilion for the 2024 Venice Biennale. In 2022, Azu Nwagbogu was appointed as one of the first curators of Buro Stedelijk, a new platform for contemporary African art based in Amsterdam. His expertise in contemporary African art has made him a sought-after speaker and panelist at art events around the world. In 2022, Nwagbogu also launched the project “Dig Where You Stand (DWYS) – From Coast to Coast” which offers a new model for institutional building and engagement, with questions of decolonization, restitution and repatriation, the exhibition took place in Ibrahim Mahama’s culture hub SCCA in Tamale, Ghana. In 2021, he was awarded “Curator of Year 2021” by the Royal Photographic Society, UK, and also listed amongst the hundred most influential people in the art world by ArtReview. Nwagbogu’s primary interest is in reinventing the idea of the museum and its role as a civic space for engagement for society at large.
Working across painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation, Barthélémy Toguo addresses enduring and immediately relevant issues of borders, exile, and displacement. At the core of his practice is the notion of belonging, which stems from his dual French/Cameroonian nationality. Through poetic, hopeful, and often figural gestures connecting nature with the human body, Toguo foregrounds concerns with both ecological and societal implications. Recently, his works have been informed by movements and humanitarian tragedy including #BlackLivesMatter and the refugee crisis. He states, “What guides me is a constantly evolving aesthetic but also a sense of ethics, which makes a difference, and structures my entire approach.”
In 2008, he founded Bandjoun Station in his native Cameroon to foster contemporary art and culture within the local community. The community center includes an exhibition space, a library, an artist residency, and an organic farm. Toguo has participated in numerous international biennials, including the Sydney Biennale (2011, 2022); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2018); Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (2018); 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Havana Biennial (2012); 11th Biennale de Lyon (2011); and Dakar Biennale (2000, 2010, 2016, 2018, 2022).
In 2022, Toguo was commissioned for a monumental site-specific installation The Pillar of Missing Migrants (2022) under the Louvre Museum’s pyramid in Paris, France. In 2021, Toguo was appointed UNESCO Artist for Peace and in 2016, he was shortlisted for the Prix Marcel Duchamp. The artist presented the installation Vaincre le virus! at the Centre Pompidou, Paris the same year. Solo museum exhibitions have been held at the Museu Picasso de Barcelona, Spain; Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Georgia; Centre d’art La Malmaison, Cannes, France; Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. His works are included in public collections worldwide, including the Tate Modern, England; Centre Pompidou, France; Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France; Studio Museum Harlem, New York; and MoMA, New York. In 2011, Toguo was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature in France, and in 2023 was elevated to Officer.
Toguo was born in M’Balmayo, Cameroon, in 1967. He currently lives and works between Paris, France and Bandjoun, Cameroon.
Congolese Plantation Workers Art Leage (CATPC, acronym of the French ‘Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise’), is a cooperative of plantation workers based in Lusanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. Founded in 2014 with environmental activist René Ngongo, its members make sculptures in river clay, which are reproduced in products from the plantation: palm fat, cocoa, sugar. In 2017, they opened an OMA-designed White Cube on a former Unilever plantation and their solo show at SculptureCenter was named ‘the most challenging show of the year’ by the New York Times. In 2022 and as one of the first global instances of digital restitution, they launched a collection of NFTs that reclaim a long-lost sculpture. With the proceeds of their art, CATPC buys back depleted plantation land where they develop an inclusive, worker-owned Post-Plantation, where regenerative agriculture provides local food security, brings back biodiversity and mitigates climate change. Most recently, CATPC represented the Netherlands at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with their entry titled “The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred.”
Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987, Tamale, Ghana) is a contemporary artist who splits his time between Accra and Tamale. He graduated in 2013 with a degree in painting and sculpture from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. Mahama is known for using repurposed urban materials like wood, jute sacks, and old doors to explore themes of globalization, migration, and trade. His work often focuses on how these materials reflect crises and the impacts of global capitalism.
Textiles, especially jute sacks originally used for transporting cocoa beans in Ghana, are central to his art. These materials, bearing marks of their usage, are sewn into large tapestries that Mahama uses to cover buildings, making statements about consumer society. Notably, his installation Out of Bounds (2015) at the Venice Biennale covered the walls of the Troncone in the Arsenale.
Mahama frequently collaborates with local artisans, architects, and craftsmen in his projects, such as the Purple Hibiscus (2023-2024) commission at London’s Barbican Centre. He sometimes includes his collaborators in his work, as seen in his photographs of workers’ tattooed arms.
In addition to textiles, Mahama uses objects like rusty sewing machines and old train seats, which hold historical significance, especially in relation to Ghana’s post-colonial history. By bringing these materials into the art world, he elevates their value beyond their original purpose.
Beyond his art, Mahama has made significant contributions to art education in Ghana. He founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale in 2019, followed by the Red Clay studio complex in 2020, and in 2021 opened Nkrumah Volini, a renovated silo, further expanding his educational initiatives in northern Ghana.
