Day REZthaPoet brought culture to Miliki Lounge

Spoken word artist, REZthaPoet and visual artist Sylvester Aguddah collaborated to curate a single experience of spoken word, music, visual arts called the Exposition Experience event at the Miliki Lounge, Victoria Island, Lagos on December 14.  The Exposition Experience event was inspired by REZthaPoet’s Exposit album.  The Beige and Crow event was sponsored by Alliance […]

Spoken word artist, REZthaPoet and visual artist Sylvester Aguddah collaborated to curate a single experience of spoken word, music, visual arts called the Exposition Experience event at the Miliki Lounge, Victoria Island, Lagos on December 14. 

The Exposition Experience event was inspired by REZthaPoet’s Exposit album. 

The Beige and Crow event was sponsored by Alliance Francais, the French language and Culture organisation, Heritage Bank, a leading financial institution, and TravelStart, Africa’s top-rated online travel agency.

The Exposit album engages the relatable experiences of love, greed, comradeship, disharmony using folklore, music, modern imageries, and a hybrid of languages. The album was published in 2015 and RezthaPoet has performed it amongst other new works on several stages for 11 years across Africa. 

REZthaPoet is involved in different cultural and artistic shifts using spoken word poetry to engage and entertain a growing elite and displaced middle class. 

REZthaPoet, a contemporary poet whose works have been performed in several countries in Africa, and Slyvester Aguddah, a full-time collage artist whose works have been exhibited in Germany, Turkey and United Kingdom,  find intersecting points in their art forms because both had separately created a body of work on the theme of culture and identity from different perspectives, employing creative techniques, deviating from norms and exploring contending narratives on cosmopolitan stereotypes until they met late last year. 

The impressionist exploration of the Exposit Album by Slyvester Aguddah opened the Exposit Experience Event. His works are colourful on the surface but filled with narratives in the background. 

The exhibited works were visual art pieces produced while both artists had a conversation on the Exposit Album. 

The collage technique in the works of Aguddah has the ample realism of the cinematic and the metaphorical as both sound and words are felt without hearing them.

The event also featured sonorous music orchestra, and live music performances from RnB star, Isaac Geralds, Soukous and Pop artiste, Koffi, and culture music diva, Kayefi. Soul Rebel Korede, a poet from the Anago-French speaking part of Benin Republic was also on stage to perform his resonating poem ‘Fo Kan Bale’ amongst others poems in passionate and luxuriant French language. 

REZthaPoet performed alongside Kayefi with the orchestra in  ‘Awoof’, a work that clearly pictures the minutest sense of greed in the similitude of gluttony and extends it to the history of gross embezzlement in the landscape. REZthaPoet and Kayefi also performed ‘Asake’, a love ballad to a woman with the Orchestra.

Both artists displayed cultural and dramatic nuances giving a unique version of the singles in the Exposit album. The stage displayed the works of Sylvester Agguddah while REZthaPoet pumped in more spoken word works like ‘Bliss’, a personification of poetry that connotes heritage, language, words and experience, ‘I am’ a poem that asserts identity using the Oriki tradition and quests for identity in a cosmopolitan continent.  

Present at the event were music artiste, Ric Hassani, spoken word legend, Sage Hassan, Fashion-art designer, Austin-Aihmankhu, art curator, Kehinde Ekundayo, spoken word poet, Efe Paul Azino, Sponsors; Deputy Director Alliance Francais Emmanuelle Ravot, Cultural Coordinator, Alliance Francais, Esse Dabla, Brand Compliance Officer, Heritage Bank, Ozena Utulu, Country Manager, Travelstart, Phillip Akesson, Operations Manager, TravelStart, Bukola Akomolafe. 

The event also had in attendance culture diplomats, corporate people, art lovers, friends of REZthaPoet and Sylvester Aguddah.