The Boda Boda Lounge Project is a cross-continental video festival featuring works by contemporary artists from Africa and of African descent. The Festival first took place in 2014, and is held every two years.
The first iteration of this project featured events at over 11 spaces throughout Africa on the weekend of 21 – 23 November 2014, which included an online exhibition, giving access to audiences within and outside of the African continent.
The term ‘Boda-Boda’ is an adaptation of the word ‘border,’ and alludes to cross-border movement, suggesting physical mobility across lines that represent the divide of land and space universally. Teamed with ‘lounge’, the project seeks to engage questions of mobility within the domestic setting, and how these two notions are now being engaged in our personal spaces.
Altogether, the Boda Boda Lounge project takes cognisance of the physical aspect of mobility, attempting to engage with private space and imagine the ways through which Africans on the continent navigate this space.
The 2014 version of the Boda Boda Lounge project also looked at the archive through the feature, Une Hommage à Goddy Leye, where works by the late Cameroonian artist and intellectual, Goddy Leye, were shown in the many venues as both tribute and acknowledgment of the vast archive of video works on the African continent and it’s diaspora.