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Skyscrapers Rising From Shantytowns: A Futuristic Vision of Lagos

Read More: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/...ytowns/494528/

The artist Olalekan Jeyifous is fascinated by cities and the changing role they play in art, politics, pop-culture, and the collective imagination of society. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, but was born in Nigeria. And moving to the U.S. at six years of age really shaped his identity, and continues to inform his art.

- Lagos, one of the fastest-growing metropolises in the world, is “fertile ground,” Jeyifous says, for artists, architects, and urbanists to develop ideas and concepts pertaining to the future of cities. And yet, it’s largely overlooked by city lovers. His new photo series aims to remedy that. In it, he depicts Lagos with a skyline of ramshackle high rises, mushrooming from its shantytowns and swirling up toward the sky. --- Each high-rise seems to be buzzing with plant, human, animal, and mechanical parts, giving it the air of something alive. Each is the dominant organism in a lush and interconnected urban ecosystem, not unlike the skyscrapers envisioned by futuristic artist Renzo Picasso’s sketches.

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