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.
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.
The Nsukka group is the name given to a group of Nigerian artists associated with the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor active for much of his career in Nigeria. He has drawn particular international attention for his "bottle-top installations". These installations consist of thousands of aluminum pieces sourced from alcohol recycling stations and sewn together with copper wire, which are then transformed into metallic cloth-like wall sculptures. Such materials, while seemingly stiff and sturdy, are actually free and flexible, which often helps with manipulation when installing his sculptures. Anatsui was included in the 2023 Time 100 list of the world's most influential people.
Obiora Udechukwu is a Nigerian painter and poet.
Willem Boshoff is one of South Africa's foremost contemporary artists and regularly exhibits nationally and internationally.
Rasheed Araeen is a Karachi-born, London-based conceptual artist, sculptor, painter, writer, and curator. He graduated in civil engineering from the NED University of Engineering and Technology in 1962, and has been working as a visual artist bridging life, art and activism since his arrival in London from Pakistan in 1964.
Ndidi Dike was born in 1960 in London. She is a Nigeria-based visual artist working in sculpture and mixed-media painting. She is one of Nigeria's leading female artists.She is from Amaokwe Item in Bende local government of Abia State. She has 3 living sisters
Bili Bidjocka is a contemporary Cameroonian artist best known for his installations and sculptures. He was born in Douala, Cameroon, lives in France since the age of 12, and works in Paris, Brussels and New York City.
Contemporary African art is commonly understood to be art made by artists in Africa and the African diaspora in the post-independence era. However, there are about as many understandings of contemporary African art as there are curators, scholars and artists working in that field. All three terms of this "wide-reaching non-category [sic]" are problematic in themselves: What exactly is "contemporary", what makes art "African", and when are we talking about art and not any other kind of creative expression?
Born in 1951 in El Nuhud, Sudan and currently working in Domessargues, France; Hassan Musa is one of the Sudanese pioneers in contemporary art and zoomorphic calligraphy. Musa’s artworks are known to adapt, mix and combine diverse styles from contrasting parts of the world: his stylistic inspirations are rooted from European painting, Arabic calligraphy and Chinese watercolor. Musa’s paintings gather printed textiles which are utilized as canvas. Its theme habitually appropriates classical Western artworks to approach and challenge well-known figures such as Osama bin Laden, Che Guevara, Vincent van Gogh or Josephine Baker. One of the most well-known statements of the artist is “Images are like blows: we receive them, we give them back. We transmit violent things because that is the way we receive them. It's a way to survive, my images are my line of defense”. Musa here elaborates on how he uses his interpretation on western politics, culture and art to revive images present in the world through giving it back to the people.
Chika Okeke-Agulu is a Nigerian artist, art historian, art curator, and blogger specializing in African and African diaspora art history. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Mary Evans is a contemporary artist who lives and works in England and utilises in her subject matter both her African heritage and European upbringing.
Odili Donald Odita is a Nigerian American abstract painter who lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His work explores color both in the figurative historical context and in the sociopolitical sense. His vibrant large-scale abstractions have been described as "showstoppers" and are considered to raise questions about race and society. Most of Odita's work is inspired by the vibrant textiles of his home country, Nigeria, mixed with patterns from Western modernity.
Uzo Egonu was a Nigerian-born artist who settled in Britain in the 1940s, only once returning to his homeland for two days in the 1970s, although he remained concerned with African political struggles. According to Rasheed Araeen, Egonu was "perhaps the first person from Africa, Asia or the Caribbean to come to Britain after the War with the sole intention of becoming an artist." According to critic Molara Wood, "Egonu's work merged European and Igbo traditions but more significantly, placed Africa as the touchstone of modernism. In combining the visual languages of Western and African art, he helped redefine the boundaries of modernism, thereby challenging the European myth of the naïve, primitive African artist."
Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede is a Nigerian poet, storyteller and artist, best known as a painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He
Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi is a Nigerian artist, art historian, and curator, currently curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was raised in Enugu and studied under sculptor El Anatsui at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, before traveling as an artist and curator. In the United States, he completed his doctorate at Emory University in 2013 and became the curator of African art at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art. In 2017, he moved to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Nzewi has curated the Nigerian Afrika Heritage Biennial three times, the Dak'Art biennial in 2014, and independent exhibitions at Atlanta's High Museum of Art and New York's Richard Taittinger Gallery. Nzewi also exhibited internationally as an artist and artist-in-resident.
Senam Okudzeto is an American and British artist and educator who lives and works in Basel, London, Ghana and New York City.
Emmanuel Eni AKA Blackman in European Kitchen, is a Nigerian-born German artist and poet. He is known as a painter, sculptor, multimedia artist, and performance artist. He is also known as "Blackman in European Kitchen". Eni is asserted to be one of the outstanding contemporary artists in Africa and the western world.
Olu Amoda is a Nigerian sculptor, muralist, furniture designer, and multimedia artist best known for using relics of discarded consumer such as rusty nails, metal plates, bolts, pipes, spoons and rods to create sculptural figures, flora and animals to highlight Nigerians socio-political and cultural issues from sex, politics, race and conflict to economic distribution. He is the founder of Riverside Art and Design Studios in Lagos, Nigeria.
