KARIKPO PIPELINE (2015)
Karikpo Pipeline is a 5-channel video with a meditative soundscape derived from field recordings made by Zina in Ogoniland; birdsong and a variety of traditional instruments played by Zina herself. One of Zina’s seminal works it pits into gentle contention two ideological approaches to the identity of the Niger Delta and to Big E Environmentalism.
Karikpo is a playful masquerade, unique to the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta. The masquerade – whose masks and movements mimic the antelope – features dramatic feats of acrobatic agility among its male performers and is played for entertainment at least once a year. These masks can be found in encyclopedic museums around the world and are an icon of Ogoni cultural heritage. In Karikpo Pipeline, Saro-Wiwa transposes this masquerade performance over remnants both visible and invisible of oil infrastructure in Ogoniland: exposed pipelines, an old wellhead with pollution-soaking sand surrounding it, roads where pipelines had previously lined the landscape, roads where the pipelines still exist but are buried; a rusting, decommissioned flow station.
Filmed primarily with a drone camera, the work offers an opportunity to view the Niger Delta with an eye that conjures surveillance not only by petroleum interests but also by invisible spiritual forces. In this balletic, sweeping work that takes in the damaged yet still fecund Ogoniland landscape and funnels it through 5 landscape-oriented screens, we experience this tension between the spirit world and the material one. Karikpo Pipeline gives visual and embodied form to human relationships with environment, teasing out the physical and emotional dynamics that frame cultural value systems for Ogoniland. At once futuristic and primordial, Karikpo Pipeline exposes the pipelines that traverse the land that are visible and invisible. The work asks, who gets to speak for the Niger Delta? Culture or externally conjured disaster? What constitutes true custodianship of land and where does power lie?
This work has been shown at venues including the Blaffer Museum in Houston Texas, Krannert Museum, Tiwani Contemporary Gallery, the Madre Museum in Naples in 2022 and in September 2023 the Barbican Galleries in London.
