Karimah Ashadu: Machine Boys
May 9–July 26, 2025Opening Reception, May 9, 2025, 6–8pm
Free RSVP here.
Karimah Ashadu’s Machine Boys follows the Okada riders of Lagos who operate an informal economy of motorcycle taxi services that have been banned since 2022. The film is a layered and kinetic portrait of the riders and the impact of the ban on their lives. Though the riders work in danger of gang shakedowns, police harassment, and imprisonment, Okada—and the physical, financial, and psychological mobility it affords—becomes a potent tool of personal autonomy and collective independence among working class Nigerian men.
Trained in painting before shifting her focus to moving images, Ashadu frames her subjects and landscapes with a painterly sensibility. The camera glides through scenes like a brush across canvas in Machine Boys, capturing dynamic compositions of motorcyclists winding through the highways of Lagos. Creative camera mounting carries the viewers on sharp turns or spinning donuts in the dust with Okada. The riders strike powerful stances in stylish Gucci flip flops and Versace shades, making direct and sustained eye contact with the camera as if to size up the viewer. Together, they narrate the personal challenges and triumphs encountered in Nigeria: building their livelihoods, financing their educations, generating capital to start new businesses by riding Okada. While one rider describes his experience of migration to Lagos and how the Okada taught him both the language and the city, providing a geographical and cultural orientation, others recall encounters with God and the precarity of life and death.
Through performances of grit and masculinity, the film signals a deeper exploration of Nigerian patriarchal culture. Like contemporary cowboys, the Okada riders find power and liberation in the relationship between man and machine. Ashadu pairs the portrayal of the rugged, fierce bikers with an underlying exploration of their vulnerability to Nigerian socio-political histories and economic hardships. However, their bending of the law becomes an act of resurgence in a city where work opportunities and industry can be scarce. “I am my own boss,” a rider declares.
In Machine Boys, as in many of Ashadu’s films, daily labor is framed not as an oppressive force but as a practice of individual freedom and agency. Remnants of Western colonialism in Africa form a backdrop against which Okada riders construct their lives. Machine Boys offers a view into the informal, post-colonial economies and cultural idiosyncrasies of Lagos, with particular attention to those individuals who continuously shape it.
Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ.
Produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film, co-produced by Golddust by Ashadu.
Please join us on Saturday, May 10, 2025 for a conversation between artist Karimah Ashadu and Chrissie Iles, the Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Film Credits
Director and Editor – Karimah Ashadu
Camera – Aigberadion Israel Ikhazuangbe
Sound Mixer – Joseph Eyo Edem
Colour Grader and Graphic Designer – Abdulmonim Twebti
Audio Post-Production – Jochen Jezussek
Production Coordinator – Japhet Philibus
Production Assistants – Ibrahim Babatunde Adebayo, Anthony Monday
Produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film
Creative producer – Leonardo Bigazzi
Co-produced by Golddust by Ashadu
With the additional support of MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein
With special thanks to the bikers and the crew, Beatrice Bulgari, Alessandro Rabottini, Zainab Ashadu
Karimah Ashadu (b. London 1985) is a British-born Nigerian Artist and Film Director living and working between Hamburg and Lagos. Ashadu’s practice is concerned with labour, patriarchy and notions of independence pertaining to the socio-economic and socio-cultural context of Nigeria and its diaspora. Her work has been exhibited and screened at institutions internationally, including the 60th Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition. Her work has been shown at Kunsthalle Bremen, Tate Modern, London, Secession, Vienna, Kunstverein in Hamburg, South London Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York and Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. Upcoming exhibitions include Camden Arts Centre in London, Canal Projects, New York and MoMA PS1.
Ashadu is the recipient of other awards such as the Prize of the Bötterstraße in Bremen (2022) and the ars viva prize (2020). Public collections include MoMA, the City of Geneva Contemporary Art Collection and the Federal Collection of Contemporary Art, Germany. Fellowships include the Abigail R. Cohen fellowship at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Paris. In 2020, Ashadu established her film production company Golddust by Ashadu, specialising in Artists’ films on black culture and African discourses.
