At its core, Studio Nutai functions as a collaborative research and art-making space, where local residents, artists, weavers, youth, artisans, historians, and cultural practitioners are not only participants but co-creators. The studio brings together photography, weaving, public sculpture, oral histories, community theatre, and environmental knowledge to build new forms of visual storytelling that honour the wisdom and resilience of riverine and coastal peoples. In essence, Studio Nutai is building a community of storytellers, anchored in indigenous knowledge yet open to experimentation, committed to nurturing connection between people, land, memory, and water across coastal West Africa.
The studio’s work centers on reviving endangered indigenous practices such as reed weaving, bamboo craft, and mat-making techniques by integrating these traditions with contemporary artistic methods. Studio Nutai is a place where ancestral techniques spark new ecological innovations, offering sustainable responses to today’s climate challenges.
Studio Nutai also investigates how colonial borders severed communities, disrupted identities, and reshaped cultural memory. Through workshops, communal dialogues, and the co-production of large scale public installations, it creates space for people to reflect on shared histories of displacement, water routes, dual identities, and the lived realities of the Ogu people whose cultural ties stretch across Nigeria, Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana.
In practice, Studio Nutai operates as a learning hub and a platform for collective healing. It facilitates free workshops, youth programs, community performances, and the creation of large-scale public sculptures installed across Badagry’s waterside settlements. These activities empower residents to document their environment, articulate local issues, and imagine new futures transforming art into a tool for agency, solidarity, and environmental stewardship. Support our work!