Karimah Ashadu: “I just watch people all the time, often in quite intense ways”

In Machine Boys (2022) – Karimah Ashadu’s nearly nine-minute video about a group of young men who run an unofficial transportation service, commonly called okada, in Nigeria – speed is everything for the protagonists. Shabby motorcycles slice through the jammed Lagos traffic while riders roar their toys’ exhausts like furious lions. The artist’s biggest face off with speed during the three-year production, however, was keeping up with shifts in circumstance. “Things would change out of my control,” Ashadu tells me. “The economy changed, and so did the city and the guys who became more irritable with their situations getting tougher.” 

The Hamburg-based artist seems composed after mounting the video at New York’s Canal Projects, her institutional debut in the U.S. Surrounded by dark purple walls, the wall-spanning, single-channel projection fills the dimly-lit basement gallery space. Just outside, Chinatown’s hustle and bustle echoes the film’s frenetic panorama of the west African capital. Commerce pulls the strings in how these players make their moves.  

The film’s premiere in the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition Foreigners Everywhere earned Ashadu the prestigious Silver Lion Award for a Promising Young Artist, the sophomore outing takes the artist back to reminiscing about how she had to “come to grips with the speed of change,” during the shoot. 

Moody but direct, the film pursues a handful of drifters confident in their tolling professions yet cautious about its unexpected twists and turns. “I started riding and got to know Lagos,” admits one of the subjects, who talks about finding his footing through the illicit service. Okada adopts its name from a debunked Nigerian airline of the ‘80s that was made illegal by the government in 2022. The underground service, however, has long remained for many a crucial source of livelihood and community. 

Ashadu captures the subjects with a breezy approach, portraying them as commanders of their pursuit. The lens wanders around their faux Gucci sandals and Versace sunglasses; in return, the boys respond to the camera with high-speed tricks which emanate howling sounds and thick dust. Like rock stars on a smoky stage, they appear confident and somewhat aloof through the air’s fluttering dirt.  

The subtle waltz between poetry and intention results from Ashadu’s nuanced approach. She omits a didactic documentarian veneer which her subject matter could easily slip into through her innate obsession with observation. “I just watch people all the time, often in quite intense ways,” she quips while her gaze rests on Canal Street’s ambitiously-marching passersby through the window. She is a film-maker who likes to guess people’s next moves. In doing so, she is sometimes lucky to have her camera in hand, and if not a camera, at least a pencil.

The film’s final shot shows one of the riders roaring at the camera, crescendoing to a punchy finale. As authentic as it appears, the fourth-wall breaker stemmed from a vision Ashadu had long been marinating. “I just had this idea of an African man growling at the screen with all the pent up frustration.” A true fan of the “territory of ambiguity,” she believes in crafting her material differently for each viewer to contemplate “what is directed or purely observed.” In each endeavor, however, she commits to keeping the audience on their toes, and even “jolt them out of their passivity so that they’re placed within the work.” 

The self-taught film-maker studied Spatial Design in the University of Reading and found moving image via painting. After dabbling in performative painting (referencing the work of Carolee Schneemann and Janine Antoni), she searched for a more “instantaneous” medium. While she has recently returned to the canvas for a new film project, Ashadu sees no connection between her lens and paint. In fact, she sees film editing more like sculpture; the arduous process of cutting and pasting her stills gives the artist a rush akin to moulding a form – deciding what gets chopped and what makes the cut is a perpetual challenge in both. 

As a director, Ashadu is intensely self-aware, prioritising her subjects’ precarious positioning. “I have spent some time with these guys to understand what I needed to achieve with this film,” she adds. Distance and absence is a delicate dance which she handles with grace and nuance. Revisiting the work in New York has reaffirmed her goal for the film:  to “weave” the audience into the rhythm and make them “feel in the thick of the action.”

During filming, Ashadu recalls burning her leg on one of the bike’s exhaust pipes. But the memory that lingered the most was a line from one of the riders. “He told me ‘your fate is already decided’ which meant something like there is no way out whatever you do.” The sentiment stuck with her and “made me think about the element of truth in that.” The last few years have proven to the artist the possibility of challenging a pre-imposed script, and claiming one of the art industry’s most coveted awards was one moment of realisation on this path of self-affirmation. “Before we have to convince anybody about who we are, we have to convince ourselves,” she notes. Being an African woman based in Hamburg continues to “push” her out of a comfort zone, and is a daily reminder of her negotiation with her own creative and personal ambitions. Silver Lion aside, Ashadu remains focused on making work that always “gets closer to the concerns” of her practice.” The key element – commitment – has not changed between the first day she decided to shoot Machine Boys and today: “I perhaps thanked myself when I won the award because no matter what, it always comes back to that first idea and staying convinced to make it.”