Karimah Ashadu’s practice examines conditions of living and working in the socioeconomic context of West Africa. The filmmaker and visual artist’s new film installation Plateau, which premieres at the Secession, follows undocumented workers mining for tin and columbite on the Jos Plateau in central Nigeria.

The rugged landscape dotted with manmade craters and ponds has been mined for almost three thousand years. During the colonial era, tin mining expanded into an industry that had its heyday in the 1940s; after the expiration of the International Tin Agreement in 1985, the market collapsed and the mines closed, leaving the workers jobless. Unlike earlier generations of laborers, who were forced to seek employment and surrender the riches they extracted to the colonial masters, today’s miners are self-employed. Buoyed by hopes of striking it rich, they accept the hazardous working conditions and heavy physical labor, digging through their land a second time in search of the minerals.

Without moralizing, Ashadu brings into focus the beauty in the everyday and people’s self-reliance and struggle for emancipation. The artist explains her vision for the work:

“What Plateau has taught me is that, with all my films, I’m always looking for ways to consider labor as a kind of a practice towards independence. I’m really interested in industry and economy because it makes a country what it is and how people, through work, bring the country, its values and its ideas alive. And again, this ties into the notion of independence and how that plays out today. So not just independent as a country, but with regards to individual circumstances.”