"we transcend the illusion of separation to humanize borders."
For over 15 years, the Invisible Borders Trans-African Project has assembled African artists to engage the question of borders and the limitations of movement within and beyond the context of the inherited colonial borders of the 54 countries of the African continent. Working through road travel, the artists use their bodies and presence as sites of exchange, thinking, tactile contact, and encounters, for the articulation of stories of journeys.
Invisible Borders & The Trans-African
“Artists and writers who travelled as part of Invisible Borders did not show everyday spaces—markets, streets, restaurants, roads, malls, and people—
as sites in need of repair or development,
but as places where life occurs without judgment;
with mirth, theatricality, and beauty.”
as sites in need of repair or development,
but as places where life occurs without judgment;
with mirth, theatricality, and beauty.”
Participants of Borders Within Trans-Nigerian Road Trip 2016 backing the camera (viewer) and facing Lord Lugard's Rest House. This house (which has also become a of sort museum, and national heritage), is situated at the topmost part of Mount Patti in Lokoja, Nigeria. It was the rest house of the British Colonial Govornor Frederick Lugard, the same man who amalgamated Nigeria. It is said that from this rest house Flora Shaw, his wife looked out to the Niger River and conjured the name Nigeria. The participants facing the Rest House is a sort of confronting, or questioning the history embodied by the building.
Since 2009, Invisible Borders has envisioned a form of Trans-African exchange across the 54 countries of the African continent. The project extends the notion of pan-Africanism while engaging the failures and limitations of nationalism. In this sense, Invisible Borders situates itself as Trans-African by proposing the generative power of movement as a counterweight to the limitations imposed by borders, both imagined and real.
As nationalism emerged through the cartographic logic of colonialism, the project proposes non-linearity and fluidity—states of perpetual flux—as conditions of Trans-Africanism.
Invisible Borders holds art as a tangible tool for the research and articulation of new forms of social interaction. Its activities encourage social innovation, community development, and the creation and exchange of cultural knowledge. Central to this approach is the circulation of knowledge across class, ethnicity, and race, cutting through local, national, and international scales to create points of encounter between them.
As nationalism emerged through the cartographic logic of colonialism, the project proposes non-linearity and fluidity—states of perpetual flux—as conditions of Trans-Africanism.
Invisible Borders holds art as a tangible tool for the research and articulation of new forms of social interaction. Its activities encourage social innovation, community development, and the creation and exchange of cultural knowledge. Central to this approach is the circulation of knowledge across class, ethnicity, and race, cutting through local, national, and international scales to create points of encounter between them.
In this talk delivered at the 2025 TEDx Porto, Invisible Borders is articulated as a long-term artistic inquiry into movement, perception, and the lived reality of borders. Drawing from over fifteen years of Trans-African journeys by road—within Africa and extending into Europe and Asia (Bangladesh)—the project is presented not as a series of crossings, but as a sustained engagement with how borders shape bodies, relationships, and ways of seeing, and how they function as sites of encounter as much as demarcation.
The talk traces how Invisible Borders uses travel, presence, and encounter as artistic methods to question inherited colonial boundaries and the illusion of separation they produce. It reflects on movement as a generative force—one that reveals connection, vulnerability, and shared humanity across difference.
This talk offers a lens into the ethos, questions, and premises that animate Invisible Borders, and serves as an accessible entry point for understanding the project beyond its individual journeys, artworks, or events.
The talk traces how Invisible Borders uses travel, presence, and encounter as artistic methods to question inherited colonial boundaries and the illusion of separation they produce. It reflects on movement as a generative force—one that reveals connection, vulnerability, and shared humanity across difference.
This talk offers a lens into the ethos, questions, and premises that animate Invisible Borders, and serves as an accessible entry point for understanding the project beyond its individual journeys, artworks, or events.
Transcending the illusion of borders and separation | Emeka Okereke | TEDxPorto
"We live in times of "a volatile negotiation between the past and the present. But the past is a colonial past, therefore the present is, globally, a postcolonial one"
A makeshift film screening of Invisible Borders during a Trans-African road trip, traveling through Bamako, Mali. The film was screened with a projector the artists travelled with, and projected unto the body of the van in which the travelled. The audience were the locals of the Medina district of Bamako, Mali. From the Invisible Borders Archive, Lagos - Sarajevo Trans-African Road Trip 2014.
Over the course of fifteen years, Invisible Borders has coordinated ten editions of artistic road-trip projects across more than forty countries in Africa, as well as between Africa and Europe (Invisible Borders Road Trip: Lagos to Sarajevo, 2014).
These journeys have involved over seventy artists from countries including Ghana, Sudan, Chad, Senegal, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Egypt, Mali, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and Nigeria.
The outcomes of these Trans-African engagements have taken multiple forms: public-space exhibitions, workshops, publications, and conferences held in cities such as Khartoum, N’Djamena, Accra, Dakar, Addis Ababa, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, New York, and Paris, including presentations at the Venice Biennale and the Centre Pompidou.
In 2022, Invisible Borders collaborated with the National Geographic Society on its tenth Trans-African Road Trip, Whispers of the Wilderness. The project has been featured by CNN, Al-Jazeera, the BBC, The New York Times, Creative Time, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Its partners include Nikon, Canon Europe, Institut Français, the African Union, the Spanish Ministry of Culture, Prince Claus Fund, Arts Collaboratory, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation, and the National Geographic Society.
In 2015, Invisible Borders was named among Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers.
These journeys have involved over seventy artists from countries including Ghana, Sudan, Chad, Senegal, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Egypt, Mali, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and Nigeria.
The outcomes of these Trans-African engagements have taken multiple forms: public-space exhibitions, workshops, publications, and conferences held in cities such as Khartoum, N’Djamena, Accra, Dakar, Addis Ababa, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, New York, and Paris, including presentations at the Venice Biennale and the Centre Pompidou.
In 2022, Invisible Borders collaborated with the National Geographic Society on its tenth Trans-African Road Trip, Whispers of the Wilderness. The project has been featured by CNN, Al-Jazeera, the BBC, The New York Times, Creative Time, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Its partners include Nikon, Canon Europe, Institut Français, the African Union, the Spanish Ministry of Culture, Prince Claus Fund, Arts Collaboratory, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation, and the National Geographic Society.
In 2015, Invisible Borders was named among Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers.
a new website is coming...
We are revamping our online presence. This page is to give a glimpse about the Invisible Borders Trans-African Project. Please feel free to reach out to us if you are interested in knowing more or working with us in any way, shape or form.
Email: info@invisible-borders.com
In the meantime, discover more about the Invisible Borders Trans-African Project through our Instagram feed below
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