Artist-in-Residence
2024

At the Opera Village Art is far more than creative expression—it is a key to understanding diverse perspectives and lived realities. For over a decade, the Opera Village has been a vibrant hub for intercultural exchange, international collaboration, and social dialogue. In 2024, our residency program will focus on a special theme: Art as Participation in Social Discourse, with an emphasis on engaging the local community. The invited artists, in collaboration with partners such as the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique La Termitière, the Fasocheck Association, and Radio AWU, will lead interactive workshops on topics like media literacy, gender equity, and intercultural dialogue.This project seeks innovative, creative approaches to addressing complex societal issues—an impact that will extend beyond the borders of Burkina Faso.

Godelive Kasangati Kabena is an artist from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She currently lives and works between Kinshasa and Kumasi, where she continues her studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Her work is based on speculative research and reflects on the engagement of different bodies – these bodies open up an emancipatory, speculative field of post-humanist analysis while moving in a discursive arena on issues of reproduction and notions of axiomatic equality.

Her works have been presented in numerous exhibitions, including: 2023: Silent Invasions: The Art of Material Hacking, an exhibition by the Ghanaian initiative blaxTARLINES and the art communities of Uganda at the Amasaka Gallery in Masaka; 2023: represented by Efie Gallery at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London 2023; 2023: Worldmaking, Mitchell-Innes, New York, curated by Gideon Appah and Ylinka Barrotto; 2022: JAOU PHOTO, Commissioner Karim Sultan, the 6th. Edition of Jaou Tunis, organized by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation (KLF) and the Institut français de Tunisie (IFT); 2022: Kinshasa-(N)Tonga: exhibition Between Future and Dust, the Académie des Beaux-Arts Kinshasa misses the launch of the “Living Traces” project between Kinshasa and Brussels; 2021: Collective exhibition Materials and Things, curated by Exit Frame, as part of the public state’s “Un Quartier Généreux” season for the Africa 2020 season in Roubaix; 2020: Collective exhibition with Thephotographicollective at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London; 2019: Participation in the 12th edition of Bamako Encounters. edition of Bamako Encounters, the African Biennale of Photography in Mali; 2023: Mbwa, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, curated by Abbey IT-A; 2021: Foreign and Family Journal, Institut français de Kinshasa.

Christopher Obuh Nelson is a photographer and visual artist based in Lagos, Nigeria, focusing on environmental and social issues, post-colonialism, and modernization within the context of globalization. Initially centered on Lagos, his curiosity about Africa has led him to travel extensively across the continent.

His works have been published in renowned art magazines such as Camera Austria, Critical Intervention and Saraba Magazine have been published. In 2019, he participated in a residency at Project Space Lagos, organized by the German-Nigerian artist and curator Emeka Udemba, and became a finalist of the Access Bank ART X Prize.

In 2020, he contributed to the Goethe Institute’s “Corona Chronicles of Nigeria” project. His works are included in the digital archive of the University of Bournemouth, supported by the UK’s Art and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Christopher was nominated for the Joop Swart Masterclass and shortlisted for the Henrike Grohs Art Prize in 2020. In 2021, he co-curated the exhibition “Moving Mountains Moving Oceans” at the National Museum Lagos. The following year, he participated in “In a Pot of Hot Soup,” exploring the intersection of art and politics in Nigeria at the Brunei Gallery, University of London.

He has exhibited in group shows in cities such as Lagos, London, Munich, and Bamako. In 2022, he was part of the Asiko Art School in Praia, Cape Verde, and was commissioned by the Goethe Institute to create a short film for the New Vision Reel Stories project.
In 2023, he was invited by the South London Gallery to join an artist residency program funded by the British Council and featured in the exhibition “Pilgrims to the Lakes: Lagos Peckham Repeat.”

His works are in the collections of the University of Bournemouth, the American Embassy, and the Yunus Emre Centre in Abuja, Nigeria.

Leila Bencharnia is a Moroccan composer, sound and textile researcher, and storyteller whose practice interlaces sonic experimentation with the materiality of textiles. Their work examines the parallels between the auditory and the tactile. Inspired by the intricate logic of weaving and the symbolic language of Tamazight textile traditions, Bencharnia constructs works that are about structure, repetition, narrative and resonance. Influenced by the spatial exploration of free jazz and its commitment to improvisation, their compositions become open spaces — fluid, non-linear, and charged with the potential for sonic transformation. Currently based between Marrakech and Berlin, Bencharnia creates across diverse formats, including sonic installations, acousmatic pieces, graphic scores, and live performances. Their relationship with sound is deeply informed by their upbringing in a village near the Atlas mountains, where the oral and musical traditions of their father, a traditional Moroccan musician, shaped an early belonging with rhythm and texture. Bencharnia’s approach to composition treats sound as a woven fabric, navigating the complexities of the language of textile as a space for interpretation and protest. This methodology not only underpins their creative process but also reflects a broader philosophical inquiry into the ways we listen. By positioning radical listening as a decolonial and embodied act, Bencharnia reimagines sound as a dynamic interplay between structure, memory, and materiality.