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| Mourning Class by Zino Saro-Wiwa, 2010 |
"The Progress of Love is an unprecedented, transatlantic collaboration between the Menil Collection in Houston; the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, Nigeria; and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis that explores the universal emotion of love. The three concurrent but unique exhibitions that make up The Progress of Love constitute a narrative arc, addressing love as an ideal, love as a lived experience, and love as something lost."
"The Progress of Love at the Menil presents works by more than 20 artists from Africa, Europe, and America and examines the ways in which language, mass media, cultural traditions, and socioeconomic forces foster images and expectations about love. The exhibition pays particular attention to the effects of the digital era, asking whether our ideas about love are now coming into closer alignment across the Atlantic." http://www.theprogressoflove.com/?cat=5
"The Progress of Love exhibition at the Pulitzer specifically explores the end of love and its aftermath through works by the British-Nigerian artists Zina Saro-Wiwa and Yinka Shonibare, MBE, the French artist Sophie Calle, and the American-Jamaican-Nigerian artist Temitayo Ogunbiyi. With inclusion of both African and Western art, the exhibition invites visitors to examine their own ideas about love and its loss." http://www.theprogressoflove.com/?cat=8
"The presentation of The Progress of Love at Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos will explore the question or problem of love through a series of unfolding events and of works in a range of media, highlighting performative artistic practice that has yet to receive adequate presentation or critical engagement within the field of contemporary art in Nigeria or, more broadly, in West Africa. The performance work of Jelili Atiku (Nigeria) and Wura-Natasha Ogunji (USA) will explore the subject of love within the contexts of familial bonds and personal memory, while performative installation works by Temitayo Ogunbiyi (Nigeria) and Valérie Oka (Ivory Coast) coerce viewers into interactive projects that take the technical and ephemeral dimensions of romantic emotions as subjects of inquiry. The moving image forms an integral aspect of the exhibition through the works of Zanele Muholi (South Africa) and Andrew Esiebo (Nigeria), with their insightful and topical documentary projects as well as Adaora Nwandu's (Nigeria) short films which foreground lived experiences and fictional stories from the perspective of same-gender love confronting a continent that considers such affections taboo. Inspired by personal experiences, family ties, tradition, technology, and local literature, these works express joy, loss, absence, pain and difference; they invoke memory, challenge prejudice and articulate togetherness in lyrical and at times satirical ways.
" http://www.theprogressoflove.com/?cat=7
There are 3 installations in this series but at 3 different venues (The Pulitzer in St. Louis, The Menil in Houston, Centre for Contemporary Arts in Nigeria). Each exhibit in each museum looks at a different aspect of love. This all came about because a French artist called Sophie Calle received an email from her boyfriend telling her that they're breaking up. He ends the letter with "Take care of yourself" which then became the title of her following exhibition. She also forwarded the email to over 100 women and captured them reading the email, which formed her work "Take care of yourself". These women were different ages, and some had a relation to her, some didn't. This piece was about sharing your grief with friends to help you deal with it. There are more pieces in her exhibition which is all focused on the email. This exhibition formed part of "The Progress of Love" exhibition that I spoke about earlier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ZmbQJscaY <----- Youtube link to video explaining
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