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dedica-festival-2012-wole-soyinka — Photo: friuliveneziagiuliainfesta.it

Photographer and multiple award winner Akintunde Akinleye has opened an exhibition in honour of Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka in Pordenone, Italy. The photography exhibition commissioned by the THESIS—the organiser of the annual cultural festival tagged Dedica Festival was part of the activities lined up to honour the 1986 Nobel prize winner in literature—the first to have emerged from Africa. Each year, Dedica Festival honours a protagonist whose work of art promotes human rights and democracy across the world. Wole Soyinka is the second African poet and writer to be so honoured at this festival after the South African writer and political activist, Nadine Gordimer. The festival, which opened on March 10, also featured book readings from Soyinka’s text, dramaand music. Soyinka was also presented with the city of Pordenone seal at a ceremony that also culminated in the giving out of prizes for college students who performed well in a literary contest. The Mayor of the city of Pordenone, Claudio Pedrotti, who presided over the ceremony, wrote at the opening page of the exhibition catalogue thus:

akintunde-akinleye-personal — Akintunde Akinleye. Photo: Erik Hagoort

“For its 2012 edition, Dedica Festival offers us an extraordinary emotions: on one hand it proudly presents Wole Soyinka as a man before than as a Nobel laureate; the written words has become his weapon for building a new national identity in his post-colonial Nigeria, based on democracy and human rights; on the other hand, it shows Soyinka’s words through Akintunde Akinleye’s extra-ordinary photos, sharp social comments revealing his indignation for human conditions”. The exhibition entitled: Wole Soyinka and the Rest of Us included sub-themes such as Victims of two faiths, Un-lonely Walls, Nigeria’s bush refineries, Cultures of our Union, and Wole Soyinka and the painters. The exhibition opens till May 6, at the gallery of modern and contemporary Arts, Pordenone. Source: REUTERS