From April 28 to 30, multidisciplinary artist, Wana Udobang, popularly known as Wana-Wana, had her first mixed media installation titled ‘Dirty Laundry’ at White Space, Ikoyi, Lagos. The show, still happening in Port Harcourt and Abuja with the support of the Ford Foundation, chronicles women’s unsavoury experiences. Wana’s emotional poems were screen printed on canvas, hung from laundry lines to physically represent the metaphor “hanging your dirty laundry in public” while some women did the actual laundry in big basins. To help troubled viewers heal, they were requested, if they so wished, to write out their experiences on pieces of cloth that the women then washed. The writer, poet, and performer spoke with TCN at the opening about what motivated the show, the sources of her material, and the progress against gender-based violence. Excerpts:
What motivated you to produce this body of work?
‘Dirty Laundry’ is a project that has been on my mind over the last 10 years. My brother was the one who came up with the idea for me. I was performing somewhere in Bogobiri at the time. I was doing this poem that was quite emotional for me, so I cried, and he gave me tissue paper in front of the performance. After the performance, we reminisced and talked about some things in the poems that happened in our lives as children. It was nostalgic for us, and he was like you like to put our dirty laundry out in public.
I liked putting your dirty laundry out in public through poetry, so that idea stayed with me when he mentioned it as a joke. The idea had just percolated for quite some time, but at that moment, I thought, oh, wow, it’d be interesting to have poems hanging like laundry in public because my poems are often seen as confessional in some way or documenting. I like to call it documenting my personal history and even the personal history of other people. And so yeah, that was how the idea started for me.
We were going to do it two years ago, but then COVID hit. We had already sent out the promo material, and then they told us we were going into lockdown. So, we had to cancel. That was what happened. And again, I, you know, shoved it in the back of my mind. I was like, maybe God didn’t want it to happen. Then Ford Foundation got in touch. They were thinking about different projects around their strategic points. This is around gender-based violence, and they wanted to increase the conversation and how we can do more work to change that. So they asked me if I had any ideas for the project, and I remembered this project. That was how that started, and we got a grant to support the work. We are taking the work to Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja. That’s how this came together.
Nobody will walk in here and not think it’s something that happened recently. That tells us much about the relevance and timelessness of your material. Where did you source for them apart from those inside you?
A lot of these stories are my personal stories. And some stories are other people’s. The poem called ‘Dorathy’, that’s my mother’s name, and that’s my mother. So, a lot of these stories are very personal stories. What is interesting about the question that you asked or about the fact that the work is still relevant, I’ve written some of these poems like 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago, but it just lets you know what is happening in Nigeria and what’s happening to people. The story of somebody that occurred in 1980 something is still the same thing now.
We’ve been hiding for so long; we hide so many things. And society makes women believe that everything about them, there’s something wrong with everything, and it’s just this idea of suppressing our voices. That’s why this is what happened to somebody yesterday, or this is me when you read some of the work because it’s happening to us every day. I hope that more people feel courage in my sharing through poetry because silence thrives in loneliness and isolation.
Because many things happen to women often, you’re encouraged not to talk about it. So, you feel like you’re alone, and nobody’s talking. So, everybody’s going through the same things in their homes every day, and nobody’s talking. So, all the oppression, violence and assault continue to thrive because we are not talking. You’re not talking, so nothing is changing. If we can open our mouths and speak. If all of us can put our dirty laundry out there, then perhaps something will start to shift.
This seems to be a bit different from coming out on social media and talking about family and personal issues. How do we strike a balance to know it’s okay to talk about some problems and reserve some aspects of our personal life to protect our dignity as human beings?
First, I think those things are personal choices. But I think the question is that even when we say dignity, who determines that dignity and who says what is dignified and what isn’t dignified? So who is saying it is not dignified to talk about something that you feel, perhaps an experience that is hurtful to you or that you’ve dealt with? Or you want to share? I mean, it’s personal in terms of what people choose to share or not share. And I don’t think it’s by force to share things. But I always ask to interrogate this idea of what is dignified? What is classy? When is it dignity, and when is it that we are hiding shame?


I think we’re all dealing with shame in many different ways in our lives because our culture also is very preoccupied with perfection. And not just perfection, but the appearance of perfection. So we’re excellent performers. As Nigerians, I think we are fantastic performers. We perform perfect families; we perform everything. This is what we are good at. You cry inside. I always say to people that sometimes, when things happen, I always say, God, nobody should disgrace me. I cannot disgrace myself, and it’s part of shame because we’re ready to deal with pain over disgrace.
Some state governments and even the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs have introduced initiatives against gender-based violence. What’s your thought about their effectiveness?
I think they’re a step. Change doesn’t happen in astronomic ways, and it’s always gradual. So everybody is playing their part. I’m putting poetry in a gallery, and somebody else might be saying, how will it change anything? But I know that everybody doing something is shifting the needle. Somebody talking is moving the needle; somebody having a discussion. For me, it’s always part of an ongoing conversation.
Many years ago, probably like in the 90s, if there was a domestic violence situation, and you went to the police, they would say it’s a family matter. Now, we have family support units in police stations. We now have the DSVRT. So even if you, as the victim of abuse or violation, don’t want to prosecute, the state has the right to do it. For me, that’s enormous progress. So, yes, sometimes progress isn’t happening at a faster pace.
One of the biggest things that we have to battle is not just laws but culture because I think culture and rules have to work hand in hand together. After all, sometimes you can have all these laws. However, if the culture doesn’t change, you can still hide many things, and the law becomes redundant.