Zwischen Lagos und Berlin

For Zwischen Lagos und Berlin, I wanted to create a body of work that represented, in real time, the experiences and observations obtained while working in Lagos and Berlin. I realized that I wanted it to function in part as a visual diary, but with fictional and non-fictional elements to it, so I started making sketches, taking photographs, writing notes and basically looking out for any references in everyday life and in the past that showed a preoccupation with the collection and recording of experiences and observations. 

I would like to focus on the narrative strategy and the use of text and image, and text as image, in the creative process leading up to the creation of the works. I am very much drawn to graphic novels and their innovative use of text and image combinations to tell stories, but I am also not a huge fan of repetition, which is a common feature in most works that tend to exist in sequential form. In making the drawings, I explored how to tell a story, where all of the drawings are connected without using a sequence and without using a linear narrative. In a faint way, I would compare it a bit to the work of W.G. Sebald, which combined elements of prose, the language of visual diaries, and autobiographical elements to tell a story. 

I am a graphic designer and, in my practice, I am pretty much interested in how graphic design—which is primarily seen as a discipline made for the service of commerce—can be used to convey messages that are not only of a commercial nature, but also of a personal, political, social nature. Though I have created work in this vein, in relation to my other works, Zwischen Lagos und Berlin exists as a strong, foundational representation of this interest in using graphic design for a different purpose. It is a reminder to me that there is more work to be done along these lines. 

Karo Akpokiere​ in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (June 2017)