Pieter Hugo – Nollywood – information from modmove

LAPDANCE LARRY

SEVENTIES SIMON

PHOTOGRAPHY

COMIC ART

INTERVIEWS

Sub-menu 1.2.1.1

FESTIVALS

EXHIBITIONS

Pieter Hugo – Nollywood
They say Nigeria’s Nollywood is the world’s third largest film industry. It releases up to a thousand titles a year onto the local home-video market. Such productivity is only possible because the movies are made in conditions that would make western filmmakers cringe. Produced and marketed in the space of a week, they use cheap equipment, basic scripts, actors cast the day of shooting, and real locations. While drawing on genres and typologies drawn from Hollywood, Nollywood movies are a rare instance of mass-media self-representation. The stories—including tales of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, and prostitution—speak to the experiences and values of their local audiences. The narratives are overdramatic, and deprived of happy endings.

The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive; nothing is said, everything is shouted. South African photographer Pieter Hugo became intrigued by Nollywood’s fictional worlds, where the everyday and the unreal intertwine. He asked a team of actors and assistants to recreate Nollywood myths and symbols as if they were on movie sets and photographed them. The resulting images recreate the stereotypical characters that typify Nollywood productions, including mummies, satanic demons, and zombies, all casually posed in the backlots of Enugu.

Thanks to Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town.

The ghost of the Emperor Haile Selassie meets Idi Amin, Charlie's Angels do Rambo Foxy-Brown-style, David Lynch's Lost Highway snakes through Lagos, Ghostface Killah mutates into Fela's 'Zombie', and Dracula gives way for Blacula. Voodoo, hoodoo, and mambo are mashed up with Igbo rituals. Ahhwooooo . . . Werewolves of Lagos. —Stacy Hardy

Pieter Hugo –  Nollywood
Venue: Institute of Modern Art Brisbane
Dates: 25/10/10 – 20/11/10
Official Site: www.ima.org.au

also featured

Down South Exhibition
For over 60 years, Australian tradespeople have been drawn to the Antarctic by the prospect of great adventure and mateship.
Read more >>

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Exhibition
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Exhibition, based on the blockbuster film series and C.S. Lewis' beloved fictional books, opens at the Powerhouse Museum is a state-of-the-art entertainment and educational experience offers visitors the opportunity to tour scenes from the famed literary world of Narnia.
Read more >>

Game Masters – The Exhibition
Discover the Gods of Gaming. Read more >>

Modern Woman: Daughters & Lovers Exhibition
‘Modern Woman: Daughters and Lovers 1850 — 1918 | Drawings from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris’, an exhibition of drawings from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, by renowned French artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, will be showing exclusively at the Queensland Art Gallery.
Read more >>

Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb Exhibition
His secrets were hidden for thousands of years. Read more >>

Stay up to date with modmove news

about modmove

What to know how we got started?
Read more >>

read the modmove blog

Check out all the random stuff that didn't make it to the website!
Read more >>

If you have any queries or if you would like more information about modmove,
we would love to hear from you!
Read more >>

join our mailing list

subscribe to the mailing list and receive the modmove newsletter.

search modmove for previous news and reviews.