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Seun Oduwole:
I think the world has a lot to learn about not just Yoruba culture, but other African cultures. I think a lot of Africans have stories to learn. It's been a learning experience for me. Even for my scholars, it's been an experience for them because they see things with new eyes now.
VO:
This interview is part of Visionary Realms, an audio series produced by FT Longitude in partnership with The Royal Commission for AlUla.
Meg Wright:
Lagos. A megacity in southwestern Nigeria, and home to more than 14 million people, making it the second most populous city in Africa. It's a bustling metropolis steeped in history and tradition, and one that continues to evolve to meet the demands of a growing urban population.
Hello and welcome to Visionary Realms, a series that explores new visions for community development, tourism, and cultural landscapes. Each episode, we take a close-up look at a community or region that is drawing on lessons from the past to build for a sustainable future.
I'm your host, Meg Wright, and today we're off to Nigeria as we consider the role museums and galleries play as spaces that bring diverse cultures from the margins to the mainstream. Joining me to discuss this is Seun Oduwole, lead architect for the John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History and principal at Studio Imagine Simply Architecture. Seun, great to be speaking with you.
Seun Oduwole:
Hello, Meg. Thank you for inviting me. Pleasure to be here.
Meg Wright:
I'm very excited to dive in and to talk, obviously, about the John Randle Centre and everything that it means. I wonder if you could begin by giving our listeners a brief introduction to Yoruba culture, what it is that makes this culture unique, and a little bit about its history.
Seun Oduwole:
Yoruba culture is one of the oldest cultures. I think [in] most cultures, we say that, but it predominantly comes from the southwest of Nigeria. It's one of the main cultural and ethnic groups in Nigeria. But apart from the southwest of Nigeria, as well it extends to neighbouring countries, like Togo and Benin, and the culture, as a result of transatlantic slavery, you would find it in places like Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, South Carolina as well.
So it's a very tonal, very oral culture. So not a lot of it was written, but there was some written information. The recorded information were the carvings and the sculptures.
Yoruba people are very expressive, very dynamic. We're not the most genteel of people. We are a very proud group of people, very, very scholarly. Very dynamic, I think is the word I would choose to summarise Yoruba people, and the culture is an expression of that. The language is very tonal. It's very oral, storytelling. Apart from the outward, expressive, colourful representations of the culture, there is a very deep sort of philosophical root. It's a series of thought systems that underpin the culture. So I'm very, very proud to be Yoruba.
Meg Wright:
And as an expression of that culture, the John Randle Center itself has been described as “a symbol of the multiplicity of identities in the metropolis”. I wonder, can you share a bit more about the link between the city of Lagos and the museum itself?
Seun Oduwole:
Absolutely. Lagos is one of the best cities in the world. I tell people it's like New York and London on steroids. It's chaotic. It's mad. It's colourful. If you've ever been to a Nigerian wedding or Yoruba wedding or watched it on TV, you'll understand what I mean. It's just so much energy. My thought was how do we take that energy into a space?
It's about experiences. The food, it's so hot. There's so much pepper in it. It blows your head off. There's so many colours, so much clothing. There's just so much energy, noise, and it's organised. It's drumming. It's dancing. How can we take that energy and curate it and create a space that embodies that energy? But it's also didactic. So you are learning about the culture. You are learning about these histories. You're going through a journey.
Meg Wright:
Let’s talk about that journey, because I understand that you and your colleagues made a conscious choice to depart from the traditional museum model. What was the thinking behind that?
Seun Oduwole:
So if you look at most of the museums that were created in Nigeria, the first museum was the National Museum, which was built in 1957. But that was actually built by the British, and it was obviously based on a very Eurocentric model, so where objects were sourced from around the country and from the southwest as well, but placed in glass boxes in a very objectified manner.
As a young boy, I remember going to that museum and being excited about being in the museum, but feeling disconnected, and going to other ethnographic museums around the world as well, not having any sort of connection with these objects as they were. And then there's the wider narrative and perception of Yoruba and, to extension, African cultures as primitive and these objects being recordings of a primitive culture, of primitive people, which is quite incorrect.
So when this project came about, personally for me, it was an opportunity to not just rewrite that narrative, but think about it. I'm looking at it as an architect, but also as an art student and enthusiast as well, where as an individual going into these spaces, I feel no connection to my culture and to what's been exhibited. We wanted to create a space that wasn't a 21st century replica of the Eurocentric model of the museum that was built in 1957. And how do we go about that? How do we take these objects and present them in a space that puts them in context?
So it was an opportunity for us to say, "Look, why don't we focus the experience on the origins, on the beginnings. Let's look at our cosmology. Let's look at our original narratives, our mythologies, our stories, and let's focus on that. Let's provide this layer of context that led to the creation of these artefacts. Let's provide those additional layers of information that will inform people, Yoruba people as well, but internationally."
Meg Wright:
So that was the starting point. Of course, most museums begin with a collection, but it sounds like you started with an entirely blank slate. Did you feel that was necessary in telling the story of Yoruba culture?
Seun Oduwole:
If you look at it, it's the most unorthodox way of building museums, but what it did do was provide us an opportunity to interrogate the museum-building process. “Look, we've designed this building, but it's an empty shell effectively. We've got no objects. We've got no collection. But what I don't want is just to acquire a collection and then spread them chronologically through the space. I actually want to tell a story that hasn't been told before."
I needed experts within the museum space, who effectively were looking at me like I was crazy because that is not the canon. That's not the scholarly way of looking at ethnographic objects. My position was, that is why I don't want to look at it the way you look at it. So I need you to step out of your 40 years of training and trust me. Let's go on this journey and hope we don't get it wrong.
I think it's safe to say there weren't many believers, very few actually. Even the guys on the team, they took a very serious leap of faith. I don't think anybody believed we'd pull it off. But one of my philosophies is if you don't shoot, you don't score, and you miss 100% of the chances you don't take. So my message to them was, let's try it anyway.
So [we] built a team of scholars, academics, Professor Olupona, Professor Henry Drewal, Dr. Will Rea, and Professor Rowland Abiodun. They were our key academics that crafted the narrative. And then, so from that narrative, we created an object list that suited the narrative, and that allowed us to go look for the content that would help embellish or would help bring that narrative to life.
Meg Wright:
Can you talk us through the experience of being a visitor to this dynamic, living space that you’ve described? If I were to visit the Center, what would I see, hear, experience as I move through the museum?
Seun Oduwole:
So we came up with this idea of elevating into the Yoruba spiritual realm, into the fantasy realm. So we put the entire exhibition on the first floor. You come into the centre, and then escalators take you up into Yoruba spiritual realm. And then you go through this experience, which is a multisensory experience.
So as you're coming up, you're met with sound. You're met with Oriki. Oriki is Yoruba praise song. It's usually sung by women. So as you're coming up, you're hearing this very loud, very intense... The singing comes from the gut. So it gives you goosebumps even if you don't understand what's being said. So as you're coming up the escalators, you're just hearing these chants. And then you come into the space, and it's multisensory. You can touch some elements, because most museums, you're not allowed to touch anything. But here you can touch. You can feel. You can see. You can hear. There's an audioscape right through every single part of the exhibition. So it gives you this interactive, tactile, multisensory experience.
So you start with the origin of the world from the Yoruba thought perspective. And then you go through our social spatial systems before the arrival of the Europeans, we call the custom and practise, so our custom and practise that you still find today in many towns and villages. And then from there, we go into transition, which deals with the early arrival of the Europeans and early colonial settlements and trade in rubber palm, which evolved into trading people, taking those cultures with them and the resilience of the culture going to faraway places, like I said earlier, like Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, South Carolina.
So once you go through that, then you get to the independence era, the modern Yoruba era, which deals with the evolution of the culture from the 1960s after the British left into the early 21st century. And then the future area now deals with our interpretation or our reinterpretation of what the Yoruba existence is going into the future. It's new media, digital media, but it's still grounded in stories of mythology, cosmology, and so on.
So it's a mixture of media. So you're not just going around this space of antiquities. You're dealing with the carvings. You're dealing with the sculptures. But then you're dealing with animations, interactives, virtual reality, so on and so forth, objects of everyday value, things you'd find in the market, things you find in people's rooms, so on and so forth. So it's as grounded and as far-reaching an experience as possible. So when you're done with that, then you now descend back to Earth! And then get on with your life. So even internally, the root was fed and informed by the need to have people... Even unwittingly, once you visit the space, you have to elevate into our Yoruba spiritual fantasy realm and then go through the experience and come back down to Earth.
Meg Wright:
That sounds incredibly powerful.
Seun Oduwole:
It is quite powerful, yes.
Meg Wright:
And finally Seun, one question which we like to ask all our guests. What advice would you share with other creatives and leaders who hope to create spaces like this one in the future?
Seun Oduwole:
Do it afraid. Do the difficulty. Ignore the noise. You would have to, many times, reach into the depths of your own consciousness to find the will to keep on going because it's a very difficult topic. You're dealing with 500+ years of incorrect narratives, perceptions, inferiority complexes, without saying too much, and a very established canon of the role the continent plays in the creation of the modern world and the perception of Africans towards our own cultures as well, this feeling of inferiority and so on and so forth.
So there will be many challenges, but I think it's important work. I think there's an overall benefit to telling stories that haven't been told before. I think the world has a lot to learn about not just Yoruba culture, but other African cultures. I think a lot of Africans have stories to learn. It's been a learning experience for me. Even for my scholars, it's been an experience for them because they see things with new eyes now.
So to other creatives, other architects, other museum professionals, find a community that will support you. Do it. Do it afraid. Don't be afraid to be mocked. Don't be afraid to be laughed at. Another no is just a yes in the waiting. If doors get slammed in your face, buy some heavy equipment. Go through walls. It's the only thing I can say. I mean this has been an eight-year journey for us. We're still on it.
But the response that we've got from some of the public who've visited and from the diplomatic community, from the diaspora especially, and from international organisations like yourself, CNN, Netflix, Guardian, the genuine interest and response to our interpretation of how to tell new stories has been humbling and fulfilling. It's made the stress worth it.
Meg Wright:
Incredibly important advice there and such an optimistic note to end on. Seun, thank you for joining us.
Seun Oduwole:
Oh, thank you very much for having me.