Palindrome

The Face-Me-I-Face-You living spaces in Lagos are usually several small single rooms lined up opposite each other in a small building. While one room typically houses a poor family of 5, another room shelters a bachelor who constantly says “I’m only here temporarily”.

Employing photographs and textures sourced from one of such buildings, ‘Palindrome’ questions the illusory nature of class distinctions and considers value against the backdrop of limited resources. As the most industrial state in Nigeria, Lagos is home to over 15 million people, a lot of whom migrated here to seek better futures but have eventually settled into the various layers of poverty they bravely bear with the thought: “At least, I have a better life than my neighbor”.

Painting a picture of shared identity and confined living, ‘Palindrome’ takes the analogy of the crabs in a bucket and turns it around, asking the question: What happens when the crabs stop looking out of the bucket?