BOYS’ QUARTERS PROJECT SPACE.
Boys’ Quarters Project Space was a contemporary art gallery that opened on 31st May, 2014 at 24 Aggrey Road, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s old offices in downtown Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
Boys’ Quarters showed work by local Niger Delta artists as well as a national and international programme of artists. The space offers a conceptual and critically-engaged intervention into Port Harcourt’s visual art scene. The works commissioned and shown through Boys’ Quarters produce fresh imagery and more in-depth reflections on Niger Delta inner-life and environments. In effect helping re-imagine the region. The relationship between self and environment is the underlying exploratory engine and to this end our intervention into the global art scene serves to deconstruct and further expand definitions of environmentalism. We showed exhibitions featuring local artists such as Johnson Uwadinma, Diseye Tantua and international artists like John Akomfrah and Allora & Calzadilla.
The Boys’ Quarters’ is the colloquial name given to the servants quarters in a househole, a post-colonial hangover and an ever-present feature of modern West African life. The place where, to this day, domestic staff and sometimes extended family members live. We believe that in order to transcend limitation and excel - a Nigerian pre-occupation - we must run towards and not away from The Boys’ Quarters. We must investigate ourselves, go inwards as a society then reflect and expand upon who we are from our core. Our true wealth is in the people at every level of society.
The gallery was currently situated in the old offices of the late writer, activist and Nobel-Nominee, Ken Saro-Wiwa, in downtown Port Harcourt, the capital of the country’s oil industry but it closed down during covid. We are immensely proud of all we achieved in our ten year run but are now raising funds to transform the 24 Aggrey Road site into the Ken Saro-Wiwa Rooms to tell the ongoing story of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s legacy and to transform Ken and Maria Saro-Wiwa’s old Port Harcourt home and gardens into a part-time site specific museum and soundgarden that tells the story of the Ken and his family from a more personal and spiritual perspective.
It would mean so much if you could support our programme and help us build this much needed space in Port Harcourt by sending us your US tax dollars or simply donating to the Mangrove Arts Foundation. Just click here or visit the donate page.
To learn more about our past exhibitions, visit our website at www.boysquartersprojectspace.com.
Current location: 24 Aggrey Road, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria
Opening Hours: Thurs-Sat, 11am-6pm
Current Show: “Dirty Laundry” by Wana Udobang