The Slave Ship and Badagry in Ndidi Dike’s ‘Waka-into-Bondage: The Last 3/4 Mile'

Abstract

In 2008 Ndidi Dike, a Nigerian artist, held an exhibition titled ‘The Last ¾ Mile: Waka-into-Bondage’. Curated by Bisi Silva, this exhibition, which responded to ongoing events between 2007 and 2008 as part of the Democrazy series curated by the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Lagos, also served to mark the 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade by Britain. The exhibition depicted the dangerous itineraries that characterised the capture and eventual departure of slaves through Badagry, in western Nigeria, to the New World. In this article I show how Dike deployed certain objects to visually and conceptually accentuate the significance of the slave ship as the epicentre of political and cultural crises during the heyday of capitalism. I argue that Dike reinscribes Badagry in the forgotten narratives of points of origin and attempts to counter a neoliberal reading of Britain’s bicentenary commemoration of the slave trade. In so doing, she presents contemporary society as one where the violent travails and political realities of slave ships are re-enacted.