Formerly a BBC journalist, her artistic practice emerged from her interest in changing the way the world sees Africa, using film, art, and food.
[1] In 2017, an article published on Norient highlighted that Saro-Wiwa's use of dubbing alt-Nollywood movies "subverts narrative, stylistic and visual conventions of the Nigerian cinema".
On 5 June 2008, BBC Radio 4 aired the resulting half-hour programme about Achebe and his seminal novel Things Fall Apart on the 50th anniversary of the book's publication.
The principles of the alt-Nollywood genre (low-budget films that purposely exploit Nollywood's visual conventions for subversive narrative value) were expressed in these two short films that were originally created for the exhibition Sharon Stone in Abuja: Phyllis is an atmospheric portrait of a "psychic" vampire, a woman obsessed with synthetic Nollywood dramas, that lives alone in Lagos, Nigeria.
[10] In April 2012, The New York Times commissioned Saro-Wiwa to make a short documentary about the Natural Hair movement amongst black women for their acclaimed Op-Doc series.
[11] The Film Society of Lincoln Center described Saro-Wiwa as one of the emerging African women directors who "challenge and question the taboo traditions of the Continent and the Black community at large".
[12] Saro-Wiwa's video art practise seeks to map emotional landscapes, exploring their resulting physical performances and cross cultural implications.
She began making video art in 2010 when she co-curated the exhibition Sharon Stone in Abuja, which showed at Location One Gallery on Greene Street in SoHo, New York.
The exhibition featured artists: Pieter Hugo, Wangechi Mutu, Andrew Esiebo and Mickalene Thomas (with whom Saro-Wiwa created a Nollywood Living Room inside the gallery).
For the show Saro-Wiwa also presented Mourning Class: Nollywood her first video installation and also her two alt-Nollywood films, Phyllis and The Deliverance of Comfort.
For Mourning Class: Nollywood, she asked five Nigerian actresses to cry on cue for the camera, breaking their performance with a smile.
[15] The piece has been shown at Location One Gallery, at The New Museum as part of Transition Magazine's 50th anniversary birthday showcase and at The Pulitzer Foundation in St Louis.
The piece was first shown at Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town,[16] and is currently on show at The Pulitzer Foundation in St Louis as part of The Progress of Love exhibition.
[18] Her short story "Lola of the Red Oil", based loosely on Saro-Wiwa's experiences as a lone teen traveller in Bahia, Brazil, was excerpted in a book for Riflemaker Gallery's 2008 Voodoo exhibition.