Exhibitions in the making of contemporary art in Nigeria
Public Lecture by Iheanyi Onwuegbucha (Curator,
Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos)
Moderation: Nora Sternfeld (/ecm-director team, Vienna)
Nigeria’s art exhibition history significantly shaped the way its contemporary art is currently
designed. Unfortunately, in contrast to the Western contemporary art tradition which is primarily woven from the fabrics of
its exhibition milestones, exhibition history has had a rather poor reflection in the framing of critical discourse of contemporary
African art. In the context of the current interest in contemporary art from Africa, a compelling question remains how to
reconstruct the landscape of contemporary art through the clearer prism of exhibition history? In this public Lecture, Iheanyi
Onwuegbucha will discuss the key moments in the history of modern and contemporary art in Nigeria and review seminal exhibitions
in the four decades following Nigeria’s independence from Britain (1960–1990). He will use his current co-curated project
“Layers” at Labanque museum, France as a point of departure to discuss the reconfiguration of Nigerian exhibition history
within an international contemporary art discourse, taking into account the ecosystem within which this history is shaped.
