2026-06-10 | Nseabasi Akpa: in a residency at HIAP, Helsinki, Finland

Our fellow Nseabasi Akpan is participating in an artist residency HIAP (Helsinki International Artist Programme).

During my HIAP residency, I will be developing my project titled ‘Chronicles of a City’, which focuses on preserving old photographs and negative films from the 1970s–1990s collected from local photographers in Ibadan, Nigeria. Many of these materials are at risk of being lost due to the absence of proper darkroom and archival facilities. At HIAP, I plan to digitize selected negatives, experiment with new printing and archival methods, and learn more about how photographic collections are preserved in Helsinki. Through this process, I hope to protect fragile visual histories while exploring new ways to present them. This project is important to me because it connects memory, preservation, and storytelling while bringing overlooked photographic archives into contemporary conversations.

This project is supported by the European Union through the Africa-Europe Partnerships for Culture Sub-Saharan Component Individual Mobility Grants.

More information here