Adenrele Sonariwo

Last updated
Adenrele Sonariwo
Born
Washington DC
Nationality Nigerian
Alma mater Howard University, Academy of Art University, University of the Arts London
Occupation(s) Curator, Entrepreneur
FatherOba Michael Sonariwo

Adenrele Sonariwo is a Nigerian entrepreneur and art curator. She is the founder of the Rele Art Gallery on Military Street, Onikan, Lagos Island, Lagos, Nigeria as well as the Rele Art Gallery on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, California. Rele Gallery is the first African contemporary art gallery to establish an outpost in Los Angeles. Sonariwo was the lead curator of the first Nigerian pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Alongside the Rele Art Gallery, Sonariwo is also the founding director of the Rele Arts Foundation. The foundation's projects include the annual young Contemporaries programme, which offers grants, mentorship, residences and training to a small group of emerging artists, an opportunity that results in an exhibition hosted at the gallery. [1]

Contents

Education

Sonariwo got her first degree in accounting at Howard University in 2007, [2] then went on to work at PricewaterhouseCoopers as an accountant for four years. [3] [4] She has an MA Multimedia Communications from the  Academy of Art University and a certificate in Curating Contemporary Art Exhibitions from the  University of the Arts London. [4]

On return to Nigeria, she founded Rele Art Gallery in 2010, though it didn't kick off as a physical space until February, 2015. [4] In 2011, while the idea of the gallery had started taking root, she attempted to start an arts university in Nigeria which she called The Modern Day School of the Arts. [5] [3] It was "a pop up art school for art lovers who may be stuck in a different career." [6]

57th Venice Biennale

In 2017, Sonariwo became the lead curator of the first Nigerian pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. [7] [8] She was joined by writer and art critic Emmanuel Iduma as associate curator. The edition was themed Viva Arte Viva [9] [6] and the Nigerian pavilion featured the work of Victor Ehikhamenor, Peju Alatise, and Qudus Onikeku. [10] [11] [12]

Awards and other Honours

Sonariwo won The Future Awards for Arts and Culture in 2016. [13] She has also been on the Power List of influencers in culture in 2016 [14] and 2017. [15] In March 2017, she was listed as one of the 100 Most Inspiring Women in Nigeria. [16] She has spoken at TEDx events, [17] and been a member of the jury at Dak'art Biennale which took place in 2018. [18] She has also graced the cover of Guardian Life magazine in Nigeria. [19]

In 2018, Vogue listed her as one of the "Five Coolest Women in Lagos". [20] Since 2019, Sonariwo has been a consultant on culture ad tourism to the Governor of Ogun State. [1]

Personal life

Sonariwo is the daughter of the 18th Akarigbo of Remo, Oba Michael Sonariwo, who died in 2016 at 80 years. [21]

Notable interviews

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venice Biennale</span> International arts exhibition

The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy, by the Biennale Foundation. It focuses on contemporary art, and includes events for art, contemporary dance, architecture, cinema, and theatre. Two main components of the festival are known as the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale, which are held in alternating years. The others – Biennale Musica, Biennale Teatro, Venice Film Festival, and Venice Dance Biennale – are held annually. The main exhibition held in Castello alternates between art and architecture, and there are around 30 permanent pavilions built by different countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biennale</span> Event occurring every two years

In the art world, a Biennale, Italian for "biennial" or "every other year", is a large-scale international contemporary art exhibition. The term was popularised by the Venice Biennale, which was first held in 1895, but the concept of such a large scale, and intentionally international event goes back to at least the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfons Hug</span> German curator, art critic and exhibition organizer

Alfons Hug is a curator, critic and exhibition organizer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Okwui Enwezor</span> Nigerian-American curator

Okwui Enwezor was a Nigerian curator, art critic, writer, poet, and educator, specializing in art history. He lived in New York City and Munich. In 2014, he was ranked 24 in the ArtReview list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bisi Silva</span> Nigerian contemporary art curator

Bisi Silva was a Nigerian contemporary art curator based in Lagos.

The 56th Venice Biennale was an international contemporary art exhibition held between May and November 2015. The Venice Biennale takes place biennially in Venice, Italy. Artistic director Okwui Enwezor curated its central exhibition, "All The World's Futures".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Ehikhamenor</span> Nigerian visual artist

Victor Ehikhamenor is a Nigerian visual artist, writer, and photographer known for his expansive works that engage with multinational cultural heritage and postcolonial socioeconomics of contemporary black lives. In 2017, he was selected to represent Nigeria at the Venice Biennale, the first time Nigeria would be represented in the event. His work has been described as representing "a symbol of resistance" to colonialism.

The 57th Venice Biennale was an international contemporary art exhibition held between May and November 2017. The Venice Biennale takes place biennially in Venice, Italy. Artistic director Christine Macel, the chief curator at the Centre Pompidou, curated its central exhibition, "Viva Arte Viva", as a series of interconnected pavilions designed to reflect art's capacity for expanding humanism. The curator also organized a project, "Unpacking My Library", based on a Walter Benjamin essay, to list artists' favorite books. Macel was the first French director since 1995 and the fourth woman to direct the Biennale. A trend of presenting overlooked, rediscovered, or "emerging dead artists" was a theme of the 57th Biennale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angolan pavilion</span> Venice Biennale national pavilion

The Angolan pavilion, representing the nation of Angola, has participated in the Venice Biennale since 2013. As one of the biennial international art exhibition's national pavilions, Angola mounts a show in a Venetian palazzo outside Venice's Giardini. The first Angolan pavilion, which featured the photography of Edson Chagas, became the first African national pavilion to receive the biennial's top prize, the Golden Lion for best national pavilion. Chagas displayed poster-sized photographs of resituated, abandoned objects and weathered architecture in the Angolan capital of Luanda. Reviewers praised the interplay between the photographed subject matter and the Italian Renaissance artwork that adorned the hosting palazzo's walls. The 2015 Biennale hosted a group show of five Angolan artists on themes of intergenerational dialogue.

Peju Alatise is a Nigerian artist, poet, writer, and a fellow at the National Museum of African Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution. Alatise received formal training as an architect at Ladoke Akintola University in Oyo State, Nigeria. She then went on to work for 20 years as a studio artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emmanuel Iduma</span> Nigerian writer and art critic (born 1989)

Emmanuel Iduma is a Nigerian writer and art critic. He is the author of A Stranger's Pose (2018) and Farad (2012). In 2016, Farad was republished in North America as The Sound of Things to Come. He was awarded the inaugural Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism by the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art, USA. He teaches in the MFA Art Writing Program at the School of Visual Arts, New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rele Art Gallery</span> Nigerian Art Gallery

Rele Gallery is a contemporary art space and gallery in Lagos, Nigeria. It is on Military Street, Onikan Lagos and on Victoria Island, Lagos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Emokpae</span> Nigerian visual artist

Isaac Emokpae is a Nigerian visual artist, painter, and photographer. His work is defined by duality and is known for its expressionist and surrealist features.

The American pavilion is a national pavilion of the Venice Biennale. It houses the United States' official representation during the Biennale.

Tokini Peterside-Schwebig is a Nigerian entrepreneur, business woman and art collector. She is the founder of ART X Collective, a cultural management company in Lagos, Nigeria. The company's flagship fair, ART X Lagos, is the leading international art fair in West Africa.

Ayobola Kekere-Ekun is a Nigerian contemporary visual artist.

Dipo Doherty is a Nigerian painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amina Zoubir</span> Contemporary artist, director, and video art curator

Amina Zoubir is a contemporary artist, filmmaker and performer from Algiers, Algeria. She is known as a feminist performer through video-actions entitled Take your place, which she directed in 2012 during the 50th anniversary of Algerian independence, aiming to question gender issues and conditions of women in Algerian society. She has worked with different art mediums such as sculpture, drawing, installation art, performance and video art. Her work relates to notions of body language in specific spaces of North Africa territories.

James Inedu-George is a Nigerian architect and writer. He co-founds HTL Africa, Tao South Africa and HTL Asia. In 2017, he was nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.

Azu Nwagbogu is a Nigerian art curator and National Geographic Explorer at Large. He is the Founder and Director of the African Artists' Foundation, the LagosPhoto Festival and creator of Art Base Africa, an emerging virtual space dedicated to exploring and understanding contemporary African art and diaspora. He was awarded "Curator of Year" by the Royal Photographic Society in 2021, and included on the ArtReview list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world in 2021, 2022 and 2023. He will curate Benin's inaugural pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024.

References

  1. 1 2 Apollo Magazine. "Adenrele Sonariwo - Apollo 40 Under 40". apollo-magazine.com. Apollo Magazine. Retrieved 20 May 2021.
  2. ↑ New York Times. "From Lagos to Los Angeles, an African Art Gallery Arrives". nytimes.com. New York Times. Retrieved 20 May 2021.
  3. 1 2 "I Am Creative With Adenrele Sonariwo" . Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  4. 1 2 3 "From Accountant to Art Curator! Rele Art Gallery's Adenrele Sonariwo is our #BellaNaijaWCW this Week - BellaNaija". www.bellanaija.com. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  5. ↑ Nescafé (2017-04-11). "Why Adenrele Sonariwo Quit Her Auditing Job To Launch An Art Gallery". Konbini Nigeria. Archived from the original on 2019-07-01. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  6. 1 2 "Adenrele Sonariwo; The Art Lover and Brain behind The Rele Gallery". Konnect Africa. 2017-09-08. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  7. ↑ "The Venice Questionnaire #22 – Adenrele Sonariwo / ArtReview". artreview.com. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  8. ↑ "56 editions after, Nigeria debuts at Venice Biennale - Premium Times Nigeria". Premium Times Nigeria. 2017-03-28. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  9. ↑ "57th International Art Exhibition - Viva Arte Viva". La Biennale di Venezia. 2017-03-09. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  10. ↑ "See the Highlights from Nigeria's Debut at the Most Important Art Exhibition in the World - La Biennale di Venezia - BellaNaija". www.bellanaija.com. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  11. ↑ "Nigeria unveils first national pavilion at Venice art exhibition" . Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  12. ↑ Orubo, Daniel (2017-03-24). "Meet The Nigerian Artists Set To Make History At The Venice Biennale". Konbini Nigeria. Archived from the original on 2019-07-01. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  13. ↑ "See the inspiring profiles of the winners of The Future Awards Africa 2016 - The Future Awards Africa". The Future Awards Africa. 2016-12-18. Retrieved 2018-07-16.
  14. ↑ YManager (August 5, 2016). "LAOLU SEBANJO, DAMILOLA ELEBE, ADENRELE SONARIWO… SEE THE #YNAIJAPOWERLIST FOR CULTURE". YNaija.
  15. ↑ "Bovi, Wana Udobang, Osa Seven… See the #YNaijaPowerList2017 for Culture » YNaija". ynaija.com. Retrieved 2018-07-16.
  16. ↑ "AMINA MOHAMMED, MO ABUDU, SOMKELE IDHALAMA & MORE! YNAIJA.COM AND LEADING LADIES AFRICA PRESENT THE 100 MOST INSPIRING WOMEN IN NIGERIA". YNaija. March 8, 2017.
  17. ↑ "Tedx: Ibara Set To Hold The First Tedx In Abeokuta City - The Bees NG". The Bees NG. 2018-04-16. Archived from the original on 2019-07-01. Retrieved 2018-07-16.
  18. ↑ "Dak'art 2018 – Biennale de Dakar Edition 2018". biennaledakar.org (in French). Archived from the original on 2018-07-16. Retrieved 2018-07-16.
  19. ↑ "Nigeria: Adenrele Sonariwo Covers Guardian Life Magazine". News of Africa - Online Entertainment - Gossip - Celebrity Newspaper - Breaking News. 2018-01-29. Archived from the original on 2018-07-16. Retrieved 2018-07-16.
  20. ↑ "Meet the 5 Coolest Women in Lagos". Vogue. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
  21. ↑ "Ogun monarch, Oba Sonariwo, dies at 80 in UK". Punch Newspapers. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
  22. ↑ "An Interview with Adenrele Sonariwo - The Spark". The Spark. 2018-03-09. Archived from the original on 2019-07-01. Retrieved 2018-07-16.
  23. ↑ "Adenrele Sonariwo: Giving The Arts A Voice" . Retrieved 2018-07-16.
  24. ↑ Bosworth, R.J.B. (2014-09-30), "Awaiting an Italian Destiny Venice To 1866", Italian Venice, Yale University Press, pp. 1–22, doi:10.12987/yale/9780300193879.003.0001, ISBN   9780300193879
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.