ROOTS is a project that intends to approach the slavery theme through a contemporary vision, creating new routes and transcultural flows, through the reflection of the cultural diversity of the once colonizing and colonized countries and its influences in the creation of a global and plural miscegenation, questioning and identifying the roots of this process.

Starting from the discovery of a “cemetery” of former slaves – actually a “garbage dump” with 155 skeletons piled on top of each other in the Gafaria Valley – LAC decided to carry out the project ROOTS, inviting artists from the visual arts, music, dance, and performance to develop, in an artistic residency, a work that takes the slavery reality as its starting point, being these artists free to develop their work, individually or collectively.

ROOTS refers us doubly to the original meaning of the word, both in the sense that the slave was torn from his ancestral roots, and to the roots that, with the passage of time and successive generations, were created in the countries of destination shaping their contemporary cultural identity as, for example, becomes evident in the cases of Brazil and Cape Verde. It also brings us back to the idea of route, path and journey, starting and ending gate, of which Lagos is an example and active participant.

In 2017 the project returns to Lagos to, from the project’s initial location, strengthen its international slant and prepare to reach other continents and other cultural realities, equating, from new and different perspectives, the dimensions, both historical and contemporary, of the slavery phenomenon, its causes and/or political, social, economic and cultural consequences.

In the future, we intend to stimulate the realization of artistic residencies/ events within the scope of this theme, through the various contacts with the creative mass of the participating countries and the experience acquired.