It was an evening of excitement when art, business, music and media industry luminaries gathered to launch the sixth edition of ART X Lagos. Hosted at Ebony Life Place, Victoria Island, new features and innovations for the 2021 fair were revealed, alongside the winner of this year’s Access Bank ART X Prize, Chigozie Obi.
An esteemed jury selected Chigozie from five shortlisted finalists that included: Chukwudi Onwumere, Mobolaji Ogunrosoye, Nyancho NwaNri, and Omoregie Osakpolor. She will receive prize winnings of N1,800,000 towards a solo exhibition at ART X Lagos, tailored mentorship support, and a residency at Gasworks in London.
The art fair returns from 4-7 November at The Federal Palace, Victoria Island, while national and international
audiences will be able to view works online from 4-21 November on ARTXLAGOS.COM.
Tokini Peterside, ART X Collective Founder & CEO, revealed that for its largest fair to date, ART X Lagos will bring together 110 artists from 25 countries represented by 30 galleries – 15 of which are new to ART X
Lagos. This year, the fair’s curatorial theme “the restful ones are not yet born” presents an opportunity to challenge projected images and clichés about the African continent with reinvented modalities of our presence in the world.
Since its debut in 2016, ART X Lagos has become known for its ambitious program and this year presents four special projects, namely Future Africa – an exploration of the challenges that arise when thinking about the future state of the continent by David Alabo and Adéọlá Ọlágúnjú; Unfolding Layers of Time – award-winning artist Kelani Abass’ direct response to our curatorial theme; We Are Here which brings together the
Kaduna-based film collective The Critics, and the Lagos-based sound collective The Village Sound System, which is teaming up with ART X Lagos’ daily audience to develop an interactive narrative space to produce a dynamic short film and the NFT Studio with leading digital artists from the continent ART X Live!
By taking inspiration from archives of the past and our experiences in the present, the fair’s special projects
and speakers at ART X Talks this year will share ideas that contribute to creating a more collective and
diverse possibility for the future.
