Long before streaks of lines dividing lands into countries, long before borders, long before nation-states and nationalities, there have been stars. They’ve lit and guided the paths of sojourners that have walked the Earth.

The premise of the Invisible Borders Trans-African project is: Africa has, and continues to be, a story of journeys.

For the 11th edition of the Trans-African Road Trip, twelve artists — photographers, writers, filmmakers, and researchers — will travel by road from Marrakech, Morocco, to Lagos, Nigeria, traversing from north to west of the continent within a period of 48 days.
Re-tracing the path of Stars underscores the premise of the journey as remembering-with-the-body not as a nostalgia, but as re-entering a living archive of the road. It re-traces paths treaded by many whose footprints are buried under patches of imposed cartography and borders.

This artistic road trip enlists artists and researchers from Africa and the diaspora to embark on an exploration which takes the form of an expedition, using the story-shaping medium of photography, writing, film as a method of enquiry into the interstices of self and the world.

The earth is a living body. We are traversing its womb and experiencing its lustre. The artists’ work will mirror its topographical beauty, its theatrical mirth as much as its contorted corners.

The journey is also shaped by interactions with people met along the way — creating and sharing the work through makeshift exhibitions, screenings, spontaneous collaborative creating.

The works they create are an articulation of the “invisible border” that in turn emanates from taking the myriad encounters, experiences, and interpersonal interactions on the road as a mirror that reflects Self and World to each other.

For over 15 years, the Invisible Borders Trans-African Project has been dedicated to the possibility of “humanizing borders” and demystifying them through creative and artistic projections.

As we get on the road for the 11th edition, we share snippets of our experiences through daily blogging as has always been our mode of interacting with remote audiences from the road.

Works from the road trip are shaped into exhibitions, publications and public presentations. This edition of the road trip is an invitation in the framework of the Lagos Biennale 2026, and will be presented alongside other exhibitions in the Biennale as a multimedia installation.

In times when the cartography of the world is heavily contested through old images and languages of violence and imposition, “re-tracing the path of stars” is a deliberate artistic enactment towards transcending the illusion of borders as that which separates, or as institutions of hierarchy, while keeping mind, heart, and spirit open to the road and the possible historicization of borders as potent sites of encounter.

Emeka Okereke
Founder and Artistic Director
Invisible Borders Trans-African Project