Jenevieve Aken
Nigeria, b.1989
Great Expectations 8, from the Great Expectations Series
2016
Photography
Artist’s collection
Jenevieve Aken’s Great Expectations series is inspired by the Charles Dickens novel by the same name. Through this series, Aken tackles the titular ‘great expectations’ placed on Nigerian women to head into marriage. Without marriage, many women feel incomplete despite their individual and personal successes. In this photo, Aken presents herself as the model. Aken creates a visual metaphor: laying down in her wedding dress refers to the emptiness a woman can feel both in and outside of her marriage. Within the marriage, a woman’s decision to marry in order to fill a gap created by society weighs on her. Outside of it, her readiness to be married emphasizes the empty space around her, which reinforces her feelings of inadequacy in the eyes of society. Across various groups, such as in Lagos, Delta, Edo, and Ondo states, a version of an imported English law from 1882 exists, which allows husband and wife to appeal to a judge of the High Court to settle questions of property possession and title. However in the case of divorce and property right settlements, Nigerian women must fight to prove their contribution, and therefore right to, the land that they shared with their husbands in marriage (Ashiru 2007: 318). Even as widows, women are seen as “impure and contaminated and thus needs purification.” (Edemikpong 2005: 34).
Aken, Jenevieve. “Great Expectations.” (2016) Jenevieve Aken. https://www.jenevieveaken.com/great-expectations
Ashiru, M. O. A. “Gender Discrimination in the Division of Property on Divorce in Nigeria.” Journal of African Law 51, no. 2 (2007): 316-31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27607991.
Edemikpong, Hannah. “Widowhood Rites: Nigeria Women’s Collective Fights A Dehumanizing Tradition.” Off Our Backs 35, no. 3/4 (2005): 34-35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20838319.