Tega Gbenedio’s A Home I Hadn’t Known opens a Conversation Around Memory, Heritage and Home in Manchester

It might be a place that was visited often, a place that was only seen during childhood trips or a place that is mostly known through stories told by family. This connection between memory, heritage and a place was at the heart of Tega Gbenedio’s A Home I Hadn’t Known, a photography and sound installation at BFace Studios in Salford, Manchester on 26 and 27 February 2026 in collaboration with the Black Migrant Creatives Club. She used photographs of life in Lagos to invite people to think about how a connection to a place can be formed even before the place is experienced directly. 

Gbenedio’s approach is rooted in noticing what might otherwise pass without attention. The Nigerian artist, now working in the UK, has developed an interest in places' visual character and what happens to those impressions after we leave. Her camera often settles on details easy to overlook while living among them, treating the street not simply as a setting but as a record of people, habits, and a particular moment in time. 

There were no postcard views of Lagos at the centre of Gbenedio’s exhibition. Instead, her photographs turned to the city’s everyday rhythm, with buses caught in traffic, busy roads, markets, pedestrians, buildings and street life. 

For visitors who knew Lagos, these details offered moments of recognition. Gbenedio was not attempting to recreate Lagos. Instead, the exhibition offered fragments of the city and left visitors with a question at the heart of the work: Can you recognise a place you have never really known? 

Sound added another layer to the photographs. Pieces of sound from the city went along with the photos, making the space one where visitors could listen as well as look. The sound wasn’t meant to be a soundtrack for each photo. Instead, it was another way to spark memories and associations. 

This helped the exhibition explore something that photography alone cannot fully show. A photo can keep the look of a moment. Memories of a place are also made from voices, movement, music, traffic and the quiet noises people only notice when they are not there anymore. 

Speakers carried the familiar sounds of traffic, horns, engines and conversations through the space, while objects including a bus seat, market bag and worn-out handbag added a physical dimension to the installation. 

Over the two days the exhibition was open, more than 90 people came to BFace Studios. The visitors came from different backgrounds and had different connections to Nigeria, migration and African cultural identity. This allowed the work to take on meanings beyond what Tega Gbenedio experienced. 

For those who knew Nigeria, the pictures could bring back memories. Some visitors came with no connection at all. This mix of experiences was important for the work.

Even though A Home I Hadn’t Known starts with questions from diasporic life, it doesn’t ask people to share the same background. With the help of the Black Migrant Creatives Club, the exhibition created a space where these different experiences could be together. The photographs were starting points, not answers. 

One of the complex ideas in A Home I Hadn’t Known is the difference between personal memory and inherited memory. In families, stories about home can be told again and again. Children grow up hearing about streets, relatives, neighbourhoods, and ways of life. Eventually, these stories shape how they see a place. 

For British-born Nigerians who had never lived there, familiarity could come from a parent’s story, a grandparent’s memory or descriptions of a place heard while growing up. Lagos could be a home that was remembered, a home that was passed down or a place being seen for the first time. 

The exhibition also did not try to show these images as a picture of Nigeria or of Africa as a whole. They stayed as observations of life in a specific city, leaving space for the artist’s point of view and what is not seen. 

In the end, the conversations around A Home I Hadn’t Known came back to a word: home. For someone who moved away, home can mean a place that was left behind. For the next generation, it might be a place that was passed down through family history, while another country is the place of birth and daily life. For some, home might not even be about being from a country. 

Tega Gbenedio does not try to solve these differences. Instead, photography and sound offer a place where these different ideas can be next to each other. 

The Manchester presentation changed an artistic question into a shared experience, with memory, heritage and a feeling of belonging. Maybe the exhibition’s name best shows its idea: sometimes a place can feel very familiar even before you can say that you really know it.