Benin

City and the International Sex Trade El Anatsuis Visa Que Compilation and commentary by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Patience Abe To : umagbae@yahoogroups.com 7 December 2009 21:43 This heaping of responsibility on the Edo women does not surprise [me] because everyone caught prostituting always claimed to be an Edo woman. What about those other ethnic groups who started trooping abroad in seventies under the pretext of trading? Guess what! They still have not stopped. Ms Oluwakemi Adesina needs to look in her backyard for accuracy.

Patrick Okunmwendia To: umagbae@yahoogroups.com 7th December 2009 21: 48 What is not true about the assertion? The writer is just stating what we all know exist. I think 85% is the correct percentage of prostitutes we (Edo State) has sent to Europe. From Obalende to Kuramo Beach, to Lome, Abidjan, Bamako, Dakar, Italy, Belgium, Holland, France, Spain and many more countries, where are the Edo prostitutes not found?

El Anatsuis Visa Que

El Anatsui

A snake of visa seekers winds its way in front of a Western consulate in Africa. Their number indicates the scope of resolve of Africans to find succour in the West at the time the work was created. The dark, sombre colours, highlighted by the indistinguishable masses of forms, hewn without any sense of individuality, suggests the unity of these figures in their aspirations, all pursuing a goal similar in essence, a better life in what is understood as the more economically fertile regions represented by the West. The entire impression created by the shaping of the individual forms and their relationship to each other, within their total form, suggests a determination to endure drudgery in the name of a difficult goal. Anatsuis creative process in bringing forth this work was tortuous for the wood: sawing, shaping, before assembly. What shaping influences, benign, tortuous or both, await these visa seekers, during their visa quest and upon success, reaching the Promised Land?