...From Us to Us... is a participatory performance that stages the city as a reflective surface — a space where collective desire, labour, and consequence meet. The work explores shared ‘response-ability’ within the entangled relationship between architecture, ecology, and urban growth, inviting audiences to consider how environments emerge from accumulated human gestures.

At the centre of the performance stands a mirror marked with charcoal footprints. Charcoal operates as both residue and resource: a trace of extraction and combustion, but also warmth, sustenance, labour and survival. The surface carries this duality; presence and cost, use and impact.

Audience members are invited to weave rafia knots across the mirrored plane. Each knot becomes a small architectural act- an incremental decision layered onto the next. As the weaving grows, the reflection shifts: refracted, partially obscured, and continuously reconfigured. The image does not disappear; it evolves in response to collective intervention.

Through this patient tactile construction, the work positions the city as neither purely progressive nor purely destructive, but as a materialisation of shared aspirations, compromises, and urgencies. What we desire, prioritise, or overlook becomes visible in the landscapes we inhabit.

...From Us to Us... creates a liminal space for self-reflection without accusation. It asks: If our cities mirror us, what do we see? And how might recognising ourselves within these structures expand our capacity to build- and inhabit-differently?

Curated by Mary Osaretin Omoregie and Chinyere Obieze. For the Centre of Contemporary Art, Lagos and Goethe Institut.