Most Nigerians have carried Ladi Kwali in their pockets without knowing her name. She is the potter on the back of the ₦20 note, and 42 years after her death, West Africa’s biggest art fair is building its new edition around her.
ART X Lagos returns to Federal Palace from 5 to 8 November. It is the 11th edition and the first after last year’s tenth-anniversary blowout, which makes it the fair’s first real statement about what its second decade looks like. The answer is less global spectacle, more Nigerian history.
The theme, “A New Chapter, A New Decade”, borrows from the generation that shaped modernism in Nigeria, artists who mined their own traditions when foreign ideas were the easier sell. Founder Tokini Peterside-Schwebig says the fair wants to be a place to “recover what has shaped us”.
Kwali is the clearest expression of that. Her story is usually told through the British potter who trained her in Abuja. Curator Dr Jareh Das is telling it differently in “Ladi Kwali: Beyond the Vessel”, placing her next to the Gbari, Nupe and Bida pottery she came from and the women who worked beside her, Kande Ushafa and Asibi Ido. The exhibition asks why her work was filed under craft and not art, and who decided.
The gallery floor makes the same point. A fair that has drawn exhibitors from over 70 countries is showing just 15 this year, and 12 are Nigerian. Only Afriart (Uganda), Gallery 1957 (Ghana) and TAFETA (UK) are travelling in.
The rest of the programme stays close to home too. Ndidi Dike puts a capsized canoe at the centre of an installation on Badagry’s Point of No Return. Yinka Bernie turns Lagos pedestrian bridges into a sound and image piece. Joel ‘Kachi Benson screens Mothers of Chibok and sits for a conversation after.
One part is still open. The Masterclass will pick 10 emerging artists for workshops and private sessions with senior figures in African art. Applications close 26 October, 11:59 PM WAT, at artxlagos.com.
