Occupation Photographer Period 2000–present Name Aderemi Adegbite | Nationality Nigerian Notable works Endless Roads | |
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Born Abdullah Aderemi Adegbite
28 February 1982 (age 42)
Ebute-Metta, Lagos State, Nigeria ( 1982-02-28 ) Notable awards 2012 Global Winner – World Youth Movement for Democracy Photo Contest | ||
Abdullah Aderemi Adegbite also known as Aderemi Adegbite (born 28 February 1982 in Ebute Metta, Lagos, Nigeria) is a photographer, multimedia artist, poet and publisher. He lives and works in a suburb of Lagos, Iwaya, a neighboring community to Makoko.
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Early life
Aderemi Adegbite born in Ebute-Metta, Lagos State. His parents are from the same town Inisa in Odo-Otin local government area in Osun State. He discovered photographer and moving images as a means of re-examining himself, his community and the society as pretext of his image. He has since created series of personal projects and also worked on commissioned projects.
Aderemi created and curated Poetry Potter, a monthly live performance project between 2006 and 2010. As a passionate poet himself, he created this platform to serve as grooming ground for young poets, dramatists, dancers and musicians and for four years he produced this project. He ventured into publishing to extend his frontier of literary art promotion and at the end of 2011 he published his first book – a poetry collection: Endless Roads by Ralph Tathagata under Image Books, an imprint of Image & Heritage. In the first quarter of 2013, he released his second poetry publication: Symphony of Becoming by Iquo Eke, and it was on the long list of NLNG Nigerian Prize for Literature same year.
After participating in some international film productions as production manager, assistant producer and producer, he tried his hands on a documentary film in 2011. His first film is titled Ghettoration, a short documentary film, written, directed and produced by him. Ghettoration which is a coinage from Ghetto and Gyration tells the story of three friends, who live in the same community with the same passion but limited to opportunities at that point in their career. About two years after the film debuted, one of the trio release his first album - Edaoto and the other two are still working on their records in the studio.
Culture Production career
Aderemi started his artistic career through his involvement in the theatre. He trained with the playwright Lekan Balogun as a "stage hand". With the playhouse - Legendaire Theatre, he gained experiences and established himself as a self-taught Cultural Producer and Arts Manager.
As a Cultural Producer/Arts Manager, he has produced and coordinated several arts and literary events which include Poetry Potter, Lagos Poetry Festival, WordSlam, Fashion Revolution and Fashion Revolution Reloaded. He initiated P.A.G.E.S curate it in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos (CCA,Lagos).
Literary career
Aderemi became conscious of his literary craftsmanship in 2004 and he started writing plays, poetry and prose but he distinguished himself in 2005 when he took poetry as his genre of interest. The defunct Daily Times Newspapers was the first platform that gave this young Turks an avenue to express his opinion about politics, life, love, death and rebirth. And as a young poet, he published quite a lot of poems on the online poetry platforms and several anthologies, mostly published by the Forward Press, UK.
In 2006, he founded Kowry Kreations Media, a literary and performing art organisation. And under this organisation he created and produced Poetry Potter, a literary and art platform for young and old, which ran from January 2006 till December 2009. He only realised that he could not continue to produce the monthly live-show after four years when he has done all he could to raise fund for the show. He however got some writers backing on the show but the fund was not enough to run the show and that was the reason why he stopped producing Poetry Potter after a solo concert he organised for Aduke Ayobamidele Aladekomo in mid-2010.
Aderemi was invited by the exco of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Lagos Chapter mid-2006 to become the Public Relations Officer and he ran the office effectively under the chairmanship of Folu Agoi for two years- 2006–2008.
Since 2006, Aderemi has contributed to anthologies most of which was published by Anchor Books and PoetryNow, both are imprints of Forward Press UK. His other creative writings have appeared in literary magazines such as Poeticdiversity, Blackbiro, Forwardpress, Anchorbooks, PoetryNow, Blottermagazine, Oneghanaonevoice, Shortpoem, Anchorbooks, PoetryNow, Wisdom of Our Mother, Sentinel Nigeria.
After winning My Backyard Category of The One Minutes African Awards 2011 with his videoart titled: Ghetto Games, he was commissioned by the Director of The One Minutes Foundation in 2012 to create a one-minute video for the foundation's video art exhibition: Videoooooh Exhibition, which runs during the Olympics in London at the Slade Research Centre, London. The title of the video he created was Ty(-y +i)re(+d) LEGS.
N65
"N65" is the first Solo Exhibition of Aderemi Adegbite. He was tagged Angry Young Man by the director of Goethe-Institut Nigeria, Marc-Andre Schmachtel in his write-up on the exhibition.
He said that
Aderemi was involved in the fuel subsidy protest which started on 9 January and ended literally on 16th, 2012 when the Government declared a State of Emergency in all States that support the protest. He was posting photos on Facebook and CNN-iReport with articles daily during the protest which was tagged Occupy Nigeria. He was conscious of his involvement and role as a photographer in the protest and channel his creative resources towards documentation of what could be tagged: "Mini-Neo-Revolution" in the Nigerian politics, in recent years. In his remarks during the opening of "N65" he recounted
Within three hours after the pronouncement of the removal by the Government, a sachet of Pure Water which sold for N5 became N10, while the bag of 20 sachets rose from N70 to N150. As this is one of the commonly consumed products by the masses, one can only imagine what happened to other consumer products, and especially cost of public transportation!
Jahman Anikulapo, pronounced Aderemi Adegbite an eclectic artiste – in that he is a young fellow whose irrepressible energies and resourcefulness never cease to amaze me; sometimes shocking me in fact. He is a poet, a culture activist/ programmist, a journalist, a civil right activist, filmmaker and lately photographer; and one who is capable of even greater creatively positive mischief(s) than his lean frame suggests.
"N65" opened on 16 June at the Goethe-Institut office in Lagos through 6 July 2012. The solo exhibition – N65 – reopened on 17 September 2012 at the Goethe Institut Dakar, Senegal and closed in December 2012.