Bad Boys and Broken Hearts

Project Summary

This project is a collaborative film which presents research about youth and insecurity in Nigeria in a visual and accessible format. Its aim is to engage the public in challenging the stereotypes about life in the oil-producing Niger Delta region of Nigeria, and to complicate the colonial legacy of Oxford’s museum collections. The collaboration is between David Pratten, an Oxford anthropologist who has been working on the agaba masquerade in different locations across the Niger Delta since 2000, and the artist Zina Saro-Wiwa who is a curator in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and explores issues of Ogoni identity, environment and masking in her photographic and video exhibitions. This film aims to challenge public stereotypes. First, it will show how masks are not simply preserved from colonial times in ethnographic museums, but are living masking traditions that are plugged into popular culture and contemporary politics. Second, it aims to challenge the stereotypical representations linking youth and violence in the Niger Delta to dystopian ecological portraits and victim-centred narratives. The popular songs of the agaba masquerade, and the photographs and video portraits shot by Zina Saro-Wiwa complicate these positions - they capture humorous self-awareness, a proud but vulnerable masculinity, and a complex agency in urban hustling.

Project Updates

We will be posting updates as the project gets started.

Project Links

Research Project: Militant masks youth, performance, and insecurity