Alternative Central Area Locations brings together new and evolving works by Rahima Gambo that examine her diasporic relationship to Abuja, Nigeria. Using archival records and blueprints as source material, the exhibition is envisaged as a form of cartography, drifting from the past into a present and possible future.
Gambo moved to Abuja as an infant just as the city’s identity was forming. A so-called “planned city”, Abuja was constructed throughout the 1980s after the Nigerian government sought to build a new capital city that would replace Lagos. A conglomerate of five American firms (collectively known as the International Planning Associates) determined that Abuja would be built on the Gwagwa plains, over 8,000 km away, due to the site’s central location and ethnic neutrality.