The city in Yellow and Black
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Lagos has never been an easy city to understand. I should know, I’ve spent the past three years trying to do just that.
When you’re looking at the city as a newcomer — a JJC, as Lagosians call it, it can look like a place permanently trapped in traffic., it can look like a place permanently trapped in traffic. A city of impatient horns, crowded roads, rude people, strange smells, and yellow buses weaving through impossible gaps at sometimes inhuman speeds. Spend enough time here, though, and you begin to realise that the chaos is not separate from the city. It is the city. And you just might fall in love with the organised chaos.
There are very few symbols that capture Lagos’s reality better than the Danfo. With its bright yellow body and unmistakable twin black stripes running along its sides, the Danfo has evolved into more than a mode of transportation. It is a moving portrait of Lagos itself; loud, resilient, unpredictable, and somehow always finding a way forward.
As a child, I was deathly terrified of Lagos. Not because of stories I had heard, but because I had been there and seen the chaos for myself. The Danfo has claimed not only my arm temporarily (I broke it at eight years old trying to board one), but also my father’s left knee permanently. I would always ask anyone who would listen: “Where are they rushing to?!”
Now I am one of those Lagos people who always seem to be in a hurry. And I understand the annoyance when you find someone who you think is too “relaxed.” Lagos is a place of great comfort, but relaxation and contentment have no place in this city.
The paintings in this collection lean into that spirit. Their rough textures and weathered surfaces feel familiar to anyone who has spent time here. There is warmth in the colours and movement in the compositions, but there is also an honesty that refuses to smooth over the harder edges of Lagos life.
Don’t be stupid.
Don’t be slow.
Don’t allow yourself to be taken for a fool in Lagos.
Igoni Barrett references the famous Three Wise Men statues in Blackass, and whether or not those words were ever officially theirs, they feel like advice the city itself might give.
Lagos rewards ambition, but it also demands awareness. It is a city that can exhaust you in the morning and inspire you by evening. A city where opportunity and frustration often share the same street.
There is another quote — one with no exact known origin — that many Lagosians know well:
“Anyone who says there’s no money in Lagos is a fool, but Lagos money lives only in Lagos.”
As my years in this city stretch on, I fear this quote isn’t just a cliché Lagos saying. It is the truth hidden in contradiction. Lagos is a city built on the pursuit of dreams and aspirations. Entrepreneurs, artists, traders, musicians, and dreamers arrive every day convinced that something is waiting for them just beyond the next bus stop, the next meeting, the next opportunity.
Sometimes they find it. Sometimes they do not. Yet the city keeps moving.
That is what makes these paintings compelling. They are not simply depictions of buses and roads. They are portraits of a mindset. They capture the determination, humour, grit, and restless energy that have made Lagos one of the most influential cities on the continent.
Behind every yellow bus is a story. Behind every traffic jam is someone chasing something. Behind every rough brushstroke is a reminder that beauty does not always emerge from comfort. Sometimes it emerges from motion. Sometimes it emerges from survival.
And nowhere understands that better than Lagos.
Yet even Lagos exhales. At the edge of the city, past the yellow buses and the shouting conductors, there is water. Fishermen pulling nets in the early light. No horns. No rush. Just the quiet work of people who have always known that Lagos is more than one thing.
This is also Lagos. A city that never sleeps, but constantly dreams.
- Alex Edo