Financial Times features Contemporary Nigerian Art

The other day I was rather pessimistic that contemporary Nigerian arts would benefit from the popularity of by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, one of who's works sold for over US$ 1 mio the other week at Sotheby's African arts sale in New York. Turns out I needn't have been so pessimistic. I missed much more than I'd thought while I was offline – both here and in real life for almost two years. This week the Financial Times, of all newspapers, ran a feature on contemporary Nigerian arts (paywall).

The article by Matthew Green can be found in the section on Investing in Nigeria and accordingly argues that

… a growing number of wealthy Nigerians and international collectors are viewing the country's latest artistic creations with an eye on profit as well as aesthetics. Word of new talent in Lagos spreads quickly to London and New York where the market for contemporary African art is booming. Some buyers are quietly betting that many pieces as will be as well received as work from China once was. New Nigerian art is also resonating more strongly home, supported by a fast-evolving infrastructure of galleries, exhibitions and prizes. Rather than pursuing more timeless or abstract themes, painters, sculptors and photographers are building new audiences by engaging with social issues ranging from the Boko Haram insurgency to the impact of the migration crisis and evolving gender dynamics.

They mention among others Azu Nwagbogu, the director of African Artists' Foundation in Lagos who has been instrumental since 2010 in raising the profile of Nigerian and African photographers with his annual LagosPhoto (just about to come to an end for this year). As well as LagosPhoto, the recent inaugural Art X Lagos received a mention because the exhibition was 'seeking to bridge the gap between contemporary art and popular culture with bold immersive events.

Among the artists they discuss the sculptor Adeniyi 'Niyi' Olagunju features prominently. Olagunju had his first solo exhibition in London in 2010 entitled Structures of Trade (here, an interview he did with the BBC back in those days) and was recently represented at the 1:54 Contemporary African Arts Fair in London. Of particular interest to us here – with that slant towards northern Nigerians art and visual culture is their brief discussion of Fati Abubakar and her Instagram account @bitsofborno. That one's worth checking out for another, very humane perspective on life in the state that keeps on hitting the news because of Boko Haram and the resulting refugee crisis and famine.

Conversation with El Anatsui @ NPR

Snippets of a conversation with the El Anatsui.

"In Africa, we do art for contemplation only," he says. "There is music that you don't dance to; you listen to it. There are people who appreciate the art for its own sake."

“Every one of us has an artist in us. Really, some might be asleep and some are fully awake, you know. So I think I have a kind of commitment to waking up some people in whom it is asleep. Teaching, my work is still teaching.”

By Vivian Goodman

You can listen to the conversation (c.5mins) or read the transcript on the website of the NPR.

African Colours featuring Islam Kamil

Currently working on my conclusion (yes, still … its harder than you’d imagine, suddenly you have to be really really precise and think of how your main arguments best come together) and revisiting all those arguments about how Islam prevented the development of ‘meaningful’ artistic traditions in northern Nigeria. So, African Colours’ portrait of a practicing Muslim painter from Sudan, Islam Kamil, is actually quite timely for me. A welcome reminder how little of contemporary art practices (or the alleged lack thereof) in northern Nigeria can actually be explained by reference to religious discourses. Yes, Sudan (see an early post on an interview with Ahmed Elmardi in 1992) is not Nigeria. Nor is it Senegal or Egypt or …. And the artist is currently based in Doha, Qatar, anyway. But. That’s exactly the point. Isn’t it? That it's all this little bit more complicated.

Anyway, my academic preoccupation aside, enjoy the beautiful painting at African Colours, on the artist’s website here and here, at Art Wanted, Art Majeur (slide show here) as well as African Art Now (at least the latter being a commercial site).

In terms of background about the artist his profile at the Sudan Artists Gallery tells us that he was born in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1971. He studied Applied Arts from the College of Fine and Applied Art, Sudan University of Science and Technology, Khartoum. He graduated in 1995 obtaining a first class honours in design. According to his official website, he lives and works in Qatar since 1996.

African Colour’s profile of the artist quotes his website saying that he is

‘[i]nspired by the paintings of the opposition of the stories and legends and heritage Sudanese diverse civilizations and cultures, all formed characters and decorations and colors of his paintings, where you find a sense of African and Arab sometimes, other times, often mixing them in his paintings, you'll sink in beautiful colors’

He is further quoted saying

‘Occasionally, my painting appear to me like narratives or dialogues between [an] unknown population and myself, or that they emerge from a remote unknown age, or else, they are borrowed from an accumulation of a country, rich of its history, heritage and culture, or, after all they represent (Tokens) painting in signs.’

Find a list of the exhibitions and workshops in which he participated on his website (in English as well as in Arabic) as well as his profile page on the Sudanese Visual Group on Ning.

On Ning’s Sudanese Visual Group’s page you will also find more images, not only of works by Islam Kamil as well as some video clips. Here’s what seems to be the first in a series of two or three. I don’t (yet?) speak Arabic so I cannot quite tell … But if you do, check it out. If not, just enjoy the paintings in the background as I did.