Across cultural institutions, archives are being reconsidered as critical sites where memory, legacy, authorship, and erasure intersect — asked not only what they collect, but how their collections shape public narratives and historical consciousness. In West Africa, archival infrastructures have often formed under colonial extraction and fragile preservation systems, even as new institutions actively redefine how collections are built and shared.

Archival Constellations embeds archivists and researchers within the collections of CCA Lagos, Goethe-Institut, IFRA-Nigeria, and MOWAA across three years — repositioning the archive from a static repository into a dynamic research site. Rather than cataloguing alone, each resident conducts in-depth research and produces an original work or output that activates the archive in a new, publicly accessible way.