The 21st edition of the Lagos Book & Art Festival (LABAF) will take place from November 4-10, 2019 at Freedom Park, Lagos Island and other venues around the city.
LABAF which has been described as ‘Africa’s biggest cultural picnic, is week-long comprehensive open-air carnivalesque ‘feast of Life and Ideas’, featuring a mixed-grill of events including: exhibitions of books and arts, live reading sessions; children and youths art workshops; live music and many more.
This year’s edition which will proceed under the theme – “EMERGE… Breaking into the NEW” is dedicated to the memory of the multimedia artist, David Herbert Dale, who passed on in the morning of Tuesday, August 6, 2019. There will also be a celebration of writers and other creatives who passed away during the year. The list includes Bisi Silva, Okwui Enwezor, Pius Adesanmi, Paul Emema, Eddie Ugbomah, Molara Ogundipe, Frank Okonta and others.
This year’s festival theme has been described by the Committee of Relevant Arts, organizers of LABAF, as a natural sequel to the themes of the past two editions of the festival: ERUPTIONS: Global Fractures and the Our Common Humanity (2017) and RENEWAL: Towards a World that Works for All (2018)”.
The 31-odd events that will feature in the week-long festival will use the written word, the published text, The Book, and the rest of the arts, to examine the possibilities that the world may emerge from its deeply entrenched divides. What can literary arts tell us about Nigeria’s emergence around 20 years of Nigeria’s democracy; the shifting political events and discourses around the continent; as well as development in/around global politics.
The conversations will engage literature, whether fiction or non-fiction, that construct the narratives of “Break Out”, the egg-hatching type of break out, around humanity, the community, the nation state and the globe.
Jahman Anikulapo, Programme Chairman of CORA and the Director of LABAF says that “the concept of using fictional and non-fictional works to highlight the process of nation building have been part of the central philosophy of the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) since its birth in 1999 to mark the return of Nigeria to democratic governance after over three decades of military regimes”.