ABOUT THE ILLICIT GIN INSTITUTE
The Illicit Gin Institute is a conceptual think-tank founded by British-Nigerian artist Zina Saro-Wiwa. It uses palm wine spirit (also known as “illicit gin”) as a lens and exploratory framework to expose deeper, richer, surprising narratives about the oil-cursed Niger Delta, the region in Nigeria where this spirit first took off. The Institute also utilises this philosophical and spiritual lens to further our understanding of spiritual ecologies and help re-imagine indigineity in this, a time of environmental precarity.
Also referred to as ‘kaikai’ or ‘ogogoro’, this West African moonshine is a spirit that is similar to tequila or clairin rum. These spirits are distilled primarily by economically-challenged, rural-dwelling peoples. But unlike rum or tequila, palm wine liquor has not yet been understood, appreciated or exported globally. Saro-Wiwa sees a powerful metaphor in the journey of this secretive and maligned African spirit and her Illicit Gin Institute is the vehicle with which she seeks to mine the poetics and implications of this quiet enterprise. Telling deeper stories about the Niger Delta, Africa and the world along the way.
Illicit Gin Institute projects include: a conceptual distillery in Port Harcourt where small-batch, experimental, botanical illicit gins are produced; a podcast; tasting events; a test kitchen and a studio producing art installations and performance lectures inspired by Saro-Wiwa’s research findings. The project also formally documents West African indigenous knowledge systems.
The Illicit Gin Institute is a natural extension of the artist's practice. The logical culmination of an art career dedicated to using contemporary art modalities to connect the world more deeply and expressively with the little-understood and undervalued oil-producing Niger Delta. A place where so much has been extracted to serve the wider world, but which has seen precious little in return. This work is about honouring and sharing the histories, creativity, sophistication and resilience of Niger Deltans who battle daily in a degraded environment and whose culture has been defined reductively by the excesses of Big Oil. In this smoky yet smooth palm wine spirit, Saro-Wiwa sees a potent vehicle for storytelling, regeneration and environmental repair.
ABOUT OUR FOUNDER
Zina Saro-Wiwa, the founder of The Illicit Gin Institute, is a British-Nigerian artist that lives and works between Los Angeles and Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Born in Nigeria and raised since infancy in the United Kingdom, she studied Economic and Social History at Bristol University and she worked freelance as a BBC producer, presenter and reporter for over twelve years. She transitioned into art in 2009 after moving to New York from London. Initially she used art to unpack her responses to her complex and tragic family history and as her practise deepened, her art has become a tool to transform and free her understanding of the environment around us and our place within it. Though primarily known as a video artist, Saro-Wiwa has been working with local "illicit gin” since 2013 when she moved back to the Niger Delta to develop her art practise. Her palm wine spirits are always present at studio visits, performance banquets and at exhibition openings she curates. They were a regular feature at the exhibition openings at the contemporary art incubator/gallery she founded in Port Harcourt - Boys’ Quarters Project Space - where new cocktails were tested among visitors over the years.
But more than just being a celebratory offering, it is through this spirit and the Illicit Gin Institute that Saro-Wiwa hopes to express a deeper appreciation for the natural world and the ways in which it is intertwined with human emotion and fate. For her this is distillation as art practice and each bottle - an artwork as much as any of her video installations - performs as an agent of change.
Saro-Wiwa is one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s Global Thinkers of 2016, recognized for her work in the Niger Delta. In April 2017 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Art. She has given talks and has shown works at biennales, museums and art fairs around the world including Tate, Frieze and Basel Art Fairs and major public sites such as Times Square in Manhattan. Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Smithsonian Museum of African Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston among other institutions.