The second week in November marks the start of Lagos Artwork Week 2025, which brings collectively a bunch of solo and group exhibitions alongside a variety of artwork world occasions. This 12 months, the occasion is greater than ever—and contains new alternatives for reflection and progress.
Returning to the programme is the tenth version of Artwork X Lagos, West Africa’s main worldwide artwork honest, which options particular initiatives together with the exhibition An Exacting Eye by J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, the legendary Nigerian photographer whose work spanned over six many years. The honest’s individuals embody Yenwa Gallery, which has introduced the Cameroonian-French conceptual artist Pierre-Christophe Gam’s The Sanctuary of Goals to Africa for the primary time in its Lagos house, and Tiwani Up to date, which is internet hosting the primary Lagos solo present of designer and artist Nifemi Marcus-Bello.
Additionally in Lagos, and for the primary time in Ibadan too, the fifteenth version of Lagos Picture Pageant is one other returning fixture. The competition explores varied types of incarceration with a collection of initiatives together with exhibitions, screenings and collaborations throughout town. For its first version as a biennial, the occasion might be on view via 29 November.
Earlier this week, a brand new and barely totally different Artwork Week affair occurred: the Re: assemblages symposium, hosted by the Alliance Française de Lagos, organised by the Visitor Artists House and Yinka Shonibare Foundations and curated by Naima Hassan. The occasion introduced collectively cultural practitioners together with artists, curators, archivists and students from throughout Africa and the world in wide-ranging conversations about African and Afro-diasporic artwork archives.
These are The Artwork Newspaper’s three key takeaways from the occasion.
Archives should not simply concerning the previous—and entry to them within the current is vital
“To host this right here, now, is to recognise that African and Afro diasporic archives should not merely reflections of the previous,” stated Moni Aisida, the manager director of the Visitor Artists House Basis, within the symposium’s opening speech. “They’re instruments for shaping the longer term. They’re, as this programme proposes, dwelling, contested and future-shaping areas.”
This assertion was one thing of a nod to the rising efforts to protect and digitise archives throughout Africa. It highlighted the significance of this work not as a pattern, however as a way to higher replicate and inform the nuanced tales of the continent.
The theme of the archive was continued all through the keynote panel, Curatorial Historical past and African Archives. In the course of the occasion, Serubiri Moses, the New York-based Ugandan curator, editor and writer, expressed concern concerning the archives of late curators Okwui Enwezor and Bisi Silva being “locked away”, typically requiring particular data of an property or individuals and permission to entry the supplies.
Moses went on to reference Missla Libsekal, the Artwork X Lagos curator at giant, who earlier within the convention described utilizing the library of the Museum of African Artwork in Washington to entry copies of Nigeria Journal for her curatorial analysis on Lagos for the honest. This raised the query of who can entry historic books, magazines and different supplies as soon as they’ve been moved to western establishments. Nonetheless, you will need to observe that the variety of libraries throughout Africa which are simply accessible is rising.
Annotations Activation at ART X Library, 2024
Courtesy of ART X Lagos and G A S Basis.
Restitution requires motion, but additionally language and data
Some of the used phrases on the symposium was “epistemic”—regarding data or the research of the identical—and one would possibly say rightfully so. Restituting the artefacts, objects, or belongings of Africa is, after all, important. Nonetheless, as was not too long ago acknowledged by Chao Tayiana Maina, the cofounder of the Open Restitution Africa, so is furthering the language and data techniques utilized in discussions about restitution, which so typically favour the west.
Addressing this difficulty throughout a panel titled Destabilizing the Archive: In direction of Ecosystems of Restore and Renewal, Samba Yonga, the cofounder of the Ladies’s Historical past Museum of Zambia, recommended creating “multi-vocal archives” that may enable communities so as to add “context, reminiscence and interpretation alongside institutional data”.
The help and the contributions of girls have to be recognised
The necessity to recognise, help and spotlight the voices and historical past of girls was emphasised throughout a number of of the symposium’s panels, together with Rematriating the Archive. The presentation by Aisha Adamu Augie, the director basic of the Centre for Black and Pan Arts & Civilization, described as a Pan African company domiciled at Nigeria’s Ministry of Arts, Tradition & Artistic Economic system, delivered to fore the numerous ladies and their contributions. She significantly highlighted the success of the 1977 worldwide arts competition FESTAC77, however notes that girls’s tales are sometimes understated within the re-telling of the historical past of the landmark occasion.
In the meantime Sylvia Arthur, the founding father of the Accra-based Library of Africa and the African Diaspora, introduced her current challenge A Ladies’s Oral Historical past of West Africa, which was a needed reminder of the significance of how ladies maintain tales about their communities alive via many generations. Unbiased curator Jareh Das’s presentation on the observe of famend Nigerian porter and ceramist Ladi Kwali was compelling, serving partially as a name for higher documentation and recognition of her legacy.
