The Nigerian city of Lagos has become a global art destination in large part due to the success of Art X Lagos, and Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, the fair’s founder, isn’t surprised by that. “Because if I am very honest, what we are encountering now ten years on is precisely what I wanted to happen,” she told Observer on the terrace of the Federal Palace Hotel several hours before the invite-only collectors preview of the fair was due to open for its decade edition at the same hotel.
When Peterside-Schwebig and her team started Art X Lagos in 2016, one intention, she said, was to help reframe the narrative and address the misunderstanding of Lagos, and more generally, Nigeria. “Its complexities were used to paint a picture of a place that is only about difficulty,” she explained. There were difficulties, she added, but there was also creative brilliance and “great exceptional talent,” so she set out to build a platform—one that embodies the function of “art fair meets cultural festival,” a place to remind people of “that greatness,” displaying the country’s heritage, history and also to think about its future. The fair showcases multidisciplinary genres including art, music, literature and film and also hosts conversations and prize awards. Ten years on, it has grown to become an essential date on the global art fair calendar, welcoming, according to organizers, hundreds of thousands of visitors including representatives from the Smithsonian, Tate, Centre Pompidou, Zeitz MOCAA, Sharjah Art Foundation and Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.
Art X Lagos is credited with helping grow art scenes in the city and across Africa while sustaining the art market in Nigeria. Every year, several exhibitions, activations and cultural events coincide with the fair and as part of Lagos Art Week, which is an expansion of the fair’s satellite program. “We didn’t have an Art Week before. Now there are galleries intentionally activating around Art Week. Non-traditional art spaces are also doing the same. Art X Lagos has been the heartbeat of the ecosystem,” Ugonna Ibe, a curator, designer and founder of Yenwa Gallery, told Observer. “Growing exponentially, it has had an economic impact. In fact, businesses outside the art ecosystem are benefiting from what is happening here. And so many satellite events. It has just made the city so vibrant. It is hard to quantify and easy at the same time. The fair has brought so many things. It deserves the credit for quite a lot that happens in the art ecosystem.”
Established in 2021, the Lagos-based gallery made its debut at the fair this year presenting the work of U.K.-based Nigerian artist Victoria Oniosun, Lagos-based Nigerian artist Damilola Moses Opedun and Zimbabwean artist Shalom Kufakwatenzi. Another gallery that debuted at the fair in the Spotlight section is the Lagos-based Adegbola Gallery, which opened its doors in October. The gallery presented a solo booth of portraits of Sakara musicians and their patrons by Ibadan-born Nigerian painter and draftsman Adewale Kolawale John.
Titled S. Aka and His Sakara Group, the body of work is described as a continuation of the artist’s study of the intersection between art and Nigeria’s cultural history. The 20 oil and acrylic on paper artworks see John revisiting the sonic and social world of Sakara music, a popular music based on Yoruba traditions. “John is an artist who is widely collected in Nigeria, and Art X Lagos being the premier fair in the region, I thought it was a great opportunity to showcase his work to people from the region and the rest of the world,” Kayode Adegbola, the gallery’s founder, told Observer, revealing that he attended the fair’s first edition. “I’m glad that I’m alive to see [the fair in its 10th edition.] I am doubly glad that we’re able to participate in the fair this year.”
This edition of Art X Lagos, under the theme “Imagining Otherwise, No Matter the Tide,” saw the return of old initiatives like The Library, The Development Forum, Art X Cinema, Art X Live!, Schools’ Programme, Special Projects (featuring work by Nengi Omuku and Temitayo Ogunbiyi this year) and Art X Talks, which included a chat with French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop, who won the Golden Bear, the highest film prize at the 2024 Berlin International Festival for her film Dahomey, on the return of national belongings to Benin from France. The Rebels and the Movement panel also featured conversations with Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jumoh Buraimoh and Nike Davies-Okundaye about how the Zaria Rebels and the Osogbo School movement redefined modern art in Nigeria.
New initiatives included Art X Icon, titled “An Exacting Eye” and curated by Missla Libsekal, which celebrated the work and legacy of J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, perhaps best known for his hairstyle series and whose work is currently on show in the “Nigerian Modernism” show at Tate. Billed as his biggest show yet in Nigeria, the exhibition featured about 150 images, most of which were previously unseen, in the Balmoral Marquee and the Federal Palace Hotel’s waterfront garden. (The photos in the hotel’s lobby will be on view until December 30.) Ojeikere’s career spanned over six decades, covering pivotal moments in the history of Nigeria. He also covered everything from architecture to national identity and daily life.
A masterclass was also held for ten young photographers to learn from the philosophy of Ojeikere, led by the legendary photographer’s son Amaize Ojeikere, a photographer and archivist. The work of the selected three will be displayed in a digital campaign and an exhibition at a later date.
Artist, curator and cultural producer Jumoke Sanwo praised Art X Lagos as a “catalyst for the art ecosystem,” bringing “some formality to art-making production as well as what becomes of artists post-production,” with its programming pointing to an explosion of galleries as a result and the encouragement of artists being represented by galleries. She curated this year’s edition of Art Across Borders, the fair’s platform which interrogates pan-African perspectives through work by artists from Africa and its diaspora. Titled “we are where we think (we are),” it featured work by Zimbabwean Kudzanai Chiurai, Mozambican Mário Macilau, Malian Fatoumata Diabaté, Angolan Edson Chagas, Tunisian Nicène Kossentini and Jamaican Camille Chedda.
“Art X can only get bigger. Obviously, at the moment, the rest of the world knows that they have to come to Lagos. It is on everybody’s calendar and I can only imagine what can emerge from that,” stated Sanwo about the possibilities of the fair’s next decade. “It has brought the collectors to Lagos. It has brought artists in Nigeria closer to the global art world and I think it can only get better from there.” Peterside-Schwebig, the Art X Lagos founder, added: “In the coming years for me, what I want to see is a deepening and expansion of our impact. And I want Art X to continue to expand our role as catalysts while supporting the ecosystem.”
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