Casa Mouda is the new Lagos space amplifying contemporary African design

'We need more spaces in Lagos. I get asked why I am not opening a gallery in another country, [and that's because] I am passionate about developing Lagos,' shares Caline Chagoury-Moudaber, the founder of Casa Mouda, a multi-site creative studio with a bold mandate of exhibiting, amplifying, and producing contemporary African design.

Step inside Casa Mouda, Lagos

Consisting of AiMe Gallery, located in a historic architectural landmark, the Eko Hotel and AiMe Concept, a mixed purpose site that will act as a community hub, laboratory of ideas and go-to location for outdoor interventions on the Eko Atlantic Marina, Casa Mouda is the consolidation of a question Chagoury Moudaber first posed to herself in 2018. 'I live in my little bubble where I just do the work, but I kept on thinking, what did designers need?'

Chagoury-Moudaber is best known for Art 21, the pioneering contemporary art gallery she founded in 2013 that held seminal shows for artists as varied as Olu Amoda, Yusuff Aina and Tejumola Adenuga. But this is not to say that Casa Mouda is an exercise in pivoting.

'I grew up with a mother who is a lover of art and design, but particularly design. I have been around it my whole life so it was a very natural segue,' she explains. As an integral part of the African design community both as collector and connector, many of the industry’s most noted practitioners are not only part of the Casa Mouda community and the inaugural exhibit, but also, have over the years become personal friends to her

AiMe Concept’s interior was a collaboration with designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello and Gemma Sfeir. Moroccan multi-disciplinary designer Hajar Daide not only contributes furniture pieces to the inaugural exhibit, but is also the mastermind behind the branding, and architectural design of AiMe Gallery was led by Papa Omotayo of MOE+AA. 'I think the world has moved on from individuality and "me myself and I energy", but I feel community is very important. When people ask anybody I know who lives here in Lagos ‘why?’, the answer is always the community.'

With her inaugural exhibit, Chagoury-Moudaber has chosen to centre both the potentiality and actuality of Lagos. 'My Mum said, not everyone knows what to do with an art piece or design piece,' she shares. It was a passing comment that informed the numerous tableaux one encounters in the space. 'I created spaces where people could come in and just say for example, I want this whole scene for my house.'

Democratizing how people understand design not only helps from a commercial perspective but it widens the potential pool of participants and future champions. KoFi, the coffee shop concept in both spaces, is another way that Chagoury-Moudaber injects a necessary and disruptive jolt for widening the locus of engagement. The walls are covered in sand, a nod to the coastal location, and a soundscape created in collaboration with sound artist and composer Malloy James situates visitors squarely in Africa’s largest metropolis where cultures, people and stories collide to shape something new.

In titling the exhibit ‘The Design Institute’, Chagoury-Moudaber celebrates and alludes to how she is tackling an important aspect in the industry’s story-so-far; the challenge of producing on the continent and the necessity to support and celebrate craft and material storytelling.

Speaking of Ivorian designer and sculptor Jean Servais Somian, she says: 'he had knocked on doors for 20 years asking for any factory to let him come.' Solutions driven Chagoury-Moudaber partnered with UFI, a furniture factory owned by her husband Antoine Moudaber to address this.

It was a game changer for Somian and other designers including African-American Germaine Barnes, whose Credenza chair and Peacock chair were made of local wood Iroko. Completing the design lineup for the inaugural show are sculptural lighting objects by Marie-Paule Tano, shelving by Paris based, African Diaspora design collective Hall Haus, Bubu Ogisi’s glass objects that double up as wearable art, Ghanaian Baba Tree’s famed basketry and artworks from People of the Sun and Midegbeyanevesho Ojisua. The exhibit is intentionally open-ended, with pieces scheduled to be viewed in rotation or swapped in and out, allowing objects and ideas to be experienced and understood from a myriad of vantage points.

Chagoury-Moudaber is rightly excited by Casa Mouda’s future. Intentionally inclusive and with an inaugural show that has representation at its heart, she is keen for this space to reflect contemporary Africa via the lens of design, accurately. 'I’ve only ever been with all kinds of people from different cultures. It has allowed me to learn but also ask questions.'

Casa Mouda aims to answer some of them. How Africa is neither monolith or static. How migration flows, its amorphous and latterly static borders, and finally, its creatives' relationships to materials, the environment and one another have allowed for a crucible of creativity like no other on the planet. And perhaps most pertinent of all, how custodianship is an ongoing, collective activity.

Keep up to date with Casa Mouda via Instagram.