The City Beneath Reimagines Museum Space Through Performance and Digital Storytelling

The courtyard of the National Museum of Unity has been transformed into an immersive night market through The City Beneath, a multimodal installation combining performance, sculpture, painting, sound, and augmented reality.

The project challenges the traditional perception of museums as quiet spaces where historical objects are separated from the communities, memories, and spiritual worlds they once belonged to. Instead, the installation reimagines the museum courtyard as a living cultural environment where storytelling, ritual, and public interaction take place simultaneously.

Inspired by the role of night markets across West Africa, The City Beneath presents the market not simply as a commercial space, but as a meeting point between memory, spirituality, and everyday life — a place where visible and invisible worlds coexist.

At the centre of the installation stands the Market Tree, conceived as a symbolic bridge between worlds. Around it, the museum courtyard becomes a layered environment filled with handcrafted market structures, shrines, cultural objects, sound, and movement.

A key feature of the work involves theatre artists from the University of Ibadan descending from the museum rooftop into the courtyard, embodying celestial beings entering the market below. Their performance transforms the installation into what organisers describe as a “living archive,” encouraging audiences to move through, observe, and actively participate in the environment.

Within the shared space, participating artists explore different interpretations of myth, memory, and material culture.

Neec Nonso presents an immersive installation exploring reincarnation and spiritual existence through enamel bowls filled with water that contain hidden augmented reality experiences. Using reflection as a symbolic portal, visitors activate digital imagery and mythic narratives through their devices, revealing aquatic deities and unseen spiritual worlds connected to indigenous night market traditions.

Bolaji Mofeyiseke examines how digital technology can reactivate cultural memory beyond static museum display. His work uses augmented reality to revive forgotten stories, communal nostalgia, and heritage embedded within museum musical artifacts.

Dikachi Ugwu works with painted jute bags — materials closely associated with trade and movement in local markets — to retell an indigenous folktale about a hunter and an antelope that transforms into a woman. Through the work, ideas of transformation between human, animal, and spiritual worlds become linked to the physical materials of market culture itself.

Through its combination of performance, contemporary art, handcrafted structures, and digital storytelling, The City Beneath offers a reimagined museum experience where visitors engage with cultural history as something living, evolving, and participatory rather than distant or static.