Watch · Talk
Transcending the illusion of borders and separation
Invisible Borders as a long-term artistic inquiry into movement, perception and the lived reality of borders — drawn from over fifteen years of Trans-African journeys by road.
We transcend the illusion of separation to humanize borders.
Invisible Borders video Installation | 56th Venice Biennale of Art
What Invisible Borders is
A Trans-African artistic project working through movement, presence, encounter and exchange.
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.
Founded
2009, Lagos
Method
Road trips, publishing, archive, studio
Position
Trans-African, artist-led
Participants at Frederick Lugard’s Rest House
A practice in motion since 2009
More than a record
of journeys.
Across ten Road Trips completed between 2009 and 2022, Invisible Borders developed a method of moving, making and thinking together. The legacy is not a closed history. It is material that can be brought into renewed relation with the present.
2009
A practice begins
Founded in Nigeria and presented at the Bamako Festival of Photography.
2011
Across the continent
The Lagos–Addis Ababa Road Trip extends the journey across West and East Africa.
2014
Africa and Europe in one journey
The Lagos–Sarajevo Road Trip tests the inherited division between the continents.
2015
A Trans-African Worldspace
Presented at the 56th Venice Biennale as part of All the World’s Futures, curated by Okwui Enwezor, and listed among Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers.
2016–2018
Borders within, and across again
Trans-Nigerian journeys turn to internal borders; in 2018 the Lagos–Kigali Road Trip crosses the continent again.
2022
Whispers of the Wilderness
The tenth Road Trip travels through Botswana, Namibia and Angola with the National Geographic Society.
2026
The eleventh edition
The eleventh Trans-African Road Trip, Marrakesh to Lagos, is currently in the works.
Shared infrastructure, different fronts
One Project,
Four Tangents.
The expressions are not departments or sub-brands. They are four modes through which the project locates itself, acts, relates to memory and circulates knowledge.
Enact / Radical Field Journal
Upcoming journey
Re-tracing
the path
of stars
Marrakesh — Lagos
10 October — 26 November 2026
The eleventh Trans-African Road Trip. Creating, publishing, encountering and responding along the way.
Field photograph / Invisible Borders archive
IBJ / Invisible Borders Journal
Research, reflection and multimedia publishing.
IBJ develops selected and commissioned essays, visual essays, podcasts and films. It extends the long practice of writing and publishing from the journeys, while establishing a distinct editorial platform for research, criticism and artistic thought.
EssayPoetryVisual EssayPodcastVideoNotice
Re-member / The Moving Archive
A Volatile Negotiation
Between Past and Present
It is not so much about telling a story as it is about demystifying the image. It is not about proliferating images or propagating further stories of crossing. Rather, it is about inhabiting the space between preconceived projections of the world and freshly acquired perception.
Currently featured
Selected works, documents and reflections from—and activated through—the Moving Archive.
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Watch · Documentary
Artscape: The New African Photography (opens on YouTube)
Al Jazeera follows Emeka Okereke and a busload of artists and photographers on a Trans-African Road Trip, as they look for new ways to picture the continent.
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Read · Archive · Text
Emeka Okereke: Invisible Borders Trans-African Photographers Organization
Written from the outside, weeks before the borders closed: an argument for what a Trans-African organisation means against the incentive structures of contemporary art.
Enter the Moving Archive → Read the Invisible Borders Journal →
Propagate / The Relational Studio
Like a Pocket of Air
Moving in Wind
Knowledge is always context-specific. Our disposition, therefore, is to share and exchange creatively: to inhabit the in-between space—the vortex of paradox that characterises the border condition—and to nurture the conditions for contact and encounter.
“He who asks questions never loses his way.”
Igbo proverb / Onye ajụjụ anaghị efu ụzọ
Question What do we not yet know how to ask?
Make What can be discovered through practice?
Exchange What changes when knowledge circulates?
Return How does learning reorient the project?
Built through relations
Partners, sponsors and collaborators
Journeys and public work are made possible through sustained relationships with organisations, institutions and supporters.
FUJIFILM
Stay in relation
Support the work.
Invisible Borders is artist-led. Journeys, publications, workshops and the archive are sustained by people and organisations who make the work possible.
Support the project Volunteer with us Read the 2026 partnership proposal
Interested in partnering, supporting or developing a collaboration with Invisible Borders? View our Institutional Profile for an extended account of our journeys, methods, track record and relationships.