Butabu
Butabu is a documentation of the mud built architectural landscape of West Africa made during 1999 and 2000. (Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso).
A book ‘Butabu – adobe architecture of West Africa‘ was published in 2003 by Princeton Architectural Press with an essay by Suzanne Preston Blier. An Italian edition was published by Electa in 2004.
An exhibition of the work toured the UK, USA and Ireland between 2004 and 2009, including Zelda Cheatle Gallery, London; Brunai Gallery, London; Arts Centre, Aberystwyth; Sheldon Art Gallery, St Louis; Gallery of Photography, Dublin; Persepctives Gallery, Virginia, Museum of African Art, New York; Royal Geographical Society, London; University of Pennsylvania; Waterhall, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Sonoma Valley Art Gallery, California; Queen’s Library, Queens, New York and Baobab Gallery, Rochester.
More recently images from the series have been included in the exhibitions ‘Sahel: Art and Empires on the shores of the Sahara’, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2020); ‘Tresors de l’Islam en Afrique’ at the Institute de Monde Arab, Paris (2019) and the Académie du Royaume du Maroc, Rabat (2020); Good News, Maxxi, Rome (2021); ‘Laboratory of the future’, Arsenale, Venice Biennale (2023), Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh (2024).
A reworked and enlarged book, ‘Butabu Remix‘ (Architangle, Berlin), with new text and many previously unpublished and remastered photographs, was published in 2026; in collaboration with Lesley Lokko of the Africa Futures Institute, Ghana. Lokko commisioned and edited essays from David Adjaye, Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Nzinga B. Mboup, Ewa Effiom, Francis Kéré, Lesley Lokko, and Izabela Wieczorek.
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