Cristina De Middel's 'This is what hatred did' at Lagos Photo Festival 2014

Cristina De Middel, a London-based artist, created the series 'This is what hatred did' as a contemporary adaptation of Amos Tutuola's 1964 novel 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'. The work reimagines Tutuola's magical bush setting as Makoko, a floating slum neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria, where community leaders and kings establish their own rules. De Middel's photographic series updates the characters, environments, and spaces to reflect modern Nigerian realities. The project was presented as part of the Lagos Photo Festival from October 25 through November 26, 2014. This installation formed the third installment of Art in Context Africa, a yearlong monthly survey examining contemporary African art's role across local continental contexts. The original Tutuola narrative follows a five-year-old Nigerian boy who flees village violence into a spirit-inhabited bush, told through naive, repetitive prose that captures war and religion's absurd impacts. De Middel's adaptation maintains the source material's exploration of illogical territories forbidden to outsiders while transporting it to contemporary urban marginal spaces.