Sitting in traffic for at least 3 hours at a time in Lagos, I was intrigued by the nature of public transport. The bus conductors of the Transporter, widely known as the Danfo bus in Lagos (translates to quick or flying in Yoruba) ride with their doors open. These doors framed ordinary passengers in such a transient way that I had been hoping to capture through painting.

The triptych was composed of a number of pictures I took on my two visits to Lagos this year. They also demonstrate their artistic freedom on the bodies of these buses. Religious imagery is often the most prominent, as a dedication of the bus to God for safety, but the nature of these images, phrases or proverbs is often playful and fascinating to me as a passenger stuck in traffic.

I gave myself the challenge of conjuring a composition with images of my friends and some loose references I was able to take in Lagos. Every time i thought I found the perfect frame, the traffic would start to pick up again and I’d lose my perfectly framed passenger.

With my study of selknam body paint and kara walker, I was interested in the silhouette figures painted onto these buses and I wanted to create a narrative on my own Danfo. The silhouette has a way of isolating the human figure to expression conveyed by movement and costume.

Similarly to tribal marking, Danfo art is apparently not allowed on the streets of Lagos, but it thrives nevertheless. The prominence of this artistic expression is a testament to individuality and resistance to the erasure of freedom in Nigeria.

The bus is a bridge between my ideas of people and the body as an exhibition, whether individually or in a collective.