There are some visitors you prepare to receive, and there are others whose presence reminds you, almost instantly, why you began the journey in the first place.
When my dear friend Jahman Anikulapo called to tell me that Professor Awam Amkpa would be visiting the DAP Experience Centre, Lagos, my immediate reaction was almost one of disbelief. Professor Awam Amkpa? Here? Just like that?
And just like that, he walked through our doors.
It is not every day that one has the privilege of receiving a man whose life’s work has travelled so effortlessly across continents, disciplines and cultures. Professor Awam Amkpa is Vice Provost for the Arts and Dean of Arts and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi, and Professor of Drama and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. But titles alone hardly tell his story. He is a scholar, cultural theorist, filmmaker, playwright, actor and internationally respected curator of visual and performing arts.
A Nigerian intellectual whose work has helped position African creativity within some of the world’s most important academic and cultural conversations.
Perhaps that was why our conversation began almost immediately.
There was no ceremony to it. We simply started talking about Nigeria, about art, about memory and, inevitably, about photography.
We spoke about the great photographers who had walked this landscape long before my generation arrived with our cameras. As I mentioned names from Nigeria’s photographic past, something beautiful happened: he knew them. Not merely their names, but their place within the larger story of African visual culture.
For someone like me, who has spent much of his life photographing Nigeria and, in more recent years, thinking deeply about how we preserve the memory of those who came before us, that conversation meant a great deal.
Here was a scholar who has spent decades studying how Africa sees itself and how the world sees Africa, standing inside a centre created from a dream to preserve, celebrate and share the visual story of Nigeria.
I listened.
I listened because sometimes the greatest reward for building something is not applause; it is having someone who understands the subject deeply walk through the space and understand what you are trying to achieve.
Professor Amkpa spoke generously about the DAP Experience Centre and about what a place like this could mean for photography, visual culture and creative education, not only in Nigeria, but across Africa.
Coming from someone whose career has moved between Nigeria, Britain, the United States, Europe and the Middle East, and whose curatorial work has consistently placed African creativity within an international conversation, those words carried enormous weight for me.
I had the pleasure of taking him around the Centre, explaining the thinking behind the different spaces and the journey we hope every visitor will experience. I showed him our digital platforms and the possibilities we are creating around technology and visual storytelling. We spent time in the library, a part of the Centre that is particularly dear to me, and I was delighted by his response.
But beyond the compliments, I treasured his observations.
When someone of Professor Amkpa’s experience speaks, you do not simply hear, you listen, you learn, and you take notes. I took his comments to heart because the DAP Experience Centre was never conceived as a finished idea. It is a living institution that must continue to learn, grow and respond to the generations that will inherit it.
As I watched him walk through the Centre, I found myself thinking about the younger creatives who will eventually walk through those same doors: the photographers, filmmakers, writers, curators, designers and visual storytellers who are still searching for their voices.
That, for me, must be the next chapter of Professor Amkpa’s relationship with this place.
I look forward to welcoming him back, not simply as our distinguished guest, but as a teacher and mentor to a younger generation. I would love to see him sitting before young Nigerian creatives, sharing what decades of scholarship, filmmaking, curating and travelling the world have taught him: how to understand their craft, how to interrogate their own stories, how to value where they come from, and importantly, how to position their work before the world without losing the soul of who they are.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest purposes of the DAP Experience Centre: to create a bridge between those who know, those who have done, and those who are still dreaming.
Thank you, Professor Awam Amkpa, for walking through our doors.
Thank you, Jahman Anikulapo, for making the connection.
Some visits last only a few hours, but the conversations they begin can remain with an institution for years.
This was one of those visits.
And as we continue building this dream, moments like this quietly reassure me that the DAP Experience Centre is becoming what we always hoped it would be, a place where Nigeria’s past is preserved, her present is celebrated, and the next generation is given the courage and knowledge to create her future.
The doors may be in Lagos, but the conversation must belong to the world.
‘𝘿𝘼𝙔𝙊 𝘼𝘿𝙀𝘿𝘼𝙔𝙊 𝙞𝙨 𝙖 𝙉𝙞𝙜𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝘿𝙤𝙘𝙪𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙋𝙝𝙤𝙩𝙤𝙜𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙝𝙚𝙧, 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩, 𝘾𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝘼𝙣𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙞𝙨𝙩, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘼𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙧