11/04/2025
On this day, November 3rd, 2009, we crossed our first-ever border—and the Invisible Borders Trans-African Project was born.
Pictured in the first image is Uche Okpa-Iroha, monumentalizing what would eventually become a dream. Since then, we’ve embarked on 11 editions of the road trip, traversing over 40 countries. The project has engaged more than 70 artists through the road trip and its tangential projects—workshops, exhibitions, interventions.
We look back on that day: a group of artists simply wanting to travel as far as they could. To follow the road beyond the confines of the borderline known as Nigeria.
That day, we became Trans-Africans—and there has been no turning back since.
Participants of that first edition:
Uche Okpa-Iroha, Amaize Ojeikere, Unoma Giese, Charles Okereke, Uche James-Iroha, Chriss Aghana Nwobu, Emeka Okereke.
We also fondly remember Ray Daniels (photographer and actor) and Nike Adesuyi Ojeikere (poet and writer), fellow participants, who are no longer with us. All they stood for—their dreams, their vision of a better world—was lived through the Invisible Borders project. Their spirit lives on and continues with us on in Invisible Borders and continues with us on the journey.
📸 All photographs by Emeka Okereke
Courtesy of Invisible Borders Trans-African Photographers Organisation. 1st edition, 2009.
