“Not everybody outside is happy, our people are authentic to themselves. Even in turmoil, there is beauty”
24 year old visual artist Chukwuka Nwobi, said that their motivation to tell a story that is true to life, was inspired by real events that were transpiring around them. They said that the story is about the people of their city, those in who they see authenticity and beauty.
In August 2022, Chukwuka also known as MaryyX2 released the album Silent Noise, with it comes the single and debut of the official video ‘Selassie’. The video is explosive, timely and quite capturing in its style.
‘Selassie’ is not so easy to categorise into a particular genre. Simultaneously, it’s because of it being so engrained within its socio-political subtext and nuance that I bring it to your attention, as its relevance and sensitivity to events it deals with is the driving force for conversation.
I am enamoured by the choices.
An exquisite effort from the musician and artist, ‘Selassie’, the video, is a visual transcript of moments centred on a group of people — captured in the city of Lagos — who have hit a boiling point due to a number of reasons known to the viewer.
In a timespan of about one-minute, ‘Selassie’ formulates a constant, rising tension amidst a map, constructed to show us nothing but an immense visual spectacle. This minute is plotless, it uses an intentional structure of imagery, one that grows in depth until it eventually becomes a sobering sensation and triumph. Curious about its socio-political subtext and nuance, I begin to draw on an excerpt by writer Frantz Fanon, where he speaks of life in the colonised town in the chapter ‘Concerning Violence’:
The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor how. It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other. The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light. The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees, a town wallowing in the mire.
We live in formerly colonised towns and cities. Towns and cities that have inherited violence and chaos. We carry the hunger, the starvation, the need but we also carry the light; we have merely adopted darkness.
Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, is one of the world’s megacities, growing at a considerably fast pace. Thousands of people travel to this large city daily to begin or continue life and build upon ideas, dreams and futures. Chukwuka found music and art through their neighbours and community at home.
Their neighbours used to play music constantly, which invertedly captured the attention as well as curiosity of a young child, however, it was the experience of independence and the transition to living in Lagos that inspired Chukwuka to not only create ‘Selassie’ but Silent Noise as a whole.
“The ambience of Nigeria is very violent but still beautiful”, the artist states. Chukwuka loves and bears a sensitivity for Lagos — and a particular soft spot is the city’s ability to build upon the understanding they have of themselves as a person. There is a relationship between the city and one’s instinct to express, to be vulnerable and to be free. Lagos is inspiring.
“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving.”
bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Below, watch the video for ‘Selassie’ which follows moments in the lives of those who live, love and fight in Lagos, Nigeria.
