In May and November, in the plush halls of the Wheatbaker Hotel in the serene and highbrow neighborhood of Ikoyi, Arthouse Contemporary, one of Nigeria’s premier art auction houses, holds its bi-annual auctions.
The event attracts collectors, enthusiasts, captains of industry, FORBES-listed billionaires and press. Gourmet hors d&#8217;oeuvres are served; champagne is held in ornately bejewelled hands; boardroom and country club gossip is swapped; and business cards are exchanged. The honey that brought the bees – the art – is sometimes just the backdrop for this rich assembly.
<div id="attachment_3639" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3639" class="size-medium wp-image-3639" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/image2-300x167.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="167" />Imags of artworks from the Terra Kulture archive collection</div>
Hours later, exquisite pieces by masters such as El Anatsui, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Kolade Oshinowo and Ben Enwonwu are on offer and hammer prices peak in the $75,000 to $100,000 region – bought by the bourgeoisie crowd.
Although grand, elite auctions like this are infrequent in Nigeria. The country has a sprawling art industry with thousands of artists crafting their creations. However, most do not have access to exclusive auctions and other platforms that will enable them to sell more of their work and at higher prices. Who are they creating for, who is buying and how much is being sold? These questions are suspended like hot air balloons over the art industry and their answers have metamorphosed over time.
Over a decade ago, artists, many regarded as masters today, could only sell their works by hawking them out of the trunks of their cars and the consumers were a small number of patrons and collectors.
“Artists didn’t have the necessary platforms to showcase their works and also art was seen as an exclusive commodity, it was elitist in approach,” says Bolanle Austen-Peters, Founder and CEO of Terra Kulture, a cultural center that houses a leading gallery
in Lagos.
The members-only mindset and lack of platforms limited access to artists’ work and the possibility of more artwork being sold. Ten years later, galleries, auction houses and art pop-up shops, such as Terra Kulture, Nike Art Gallery, Omenka Gallery, Art Twenty One, Rele, The Art Social, have sprung up to close the gap for artists and increase the trade in contemporary and modern art.
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“Artists are now more confident as they have these platforms. Also, these art spaces and galleries became rallying points, conduits for social exchange. It created a new wave of art collectors and enthusiasts; it became a social movement,” according to Austen-Peters.
Are these spaces enough though? Has it translated to more people buying art in Nigeria?
“Yes, but I think with any industry, there’s always room for growth,” says Adenrele Sonariwo, curator of a newly-minted gallery, Rele, that represents, brands and promotes artists, rather than merely staging exhibitions.
“There’s already a dedicated following among high-net-worth individuals. They regularly collect and commission works. Where work needs to be done is with the middle class. They need to be exposed to art and learn to appreciate it. They need to be educated more about its relevance and this knowledge can then be translated into sales.”
It seems then that the spectre of elitism still hangs over the art industry. The old challenge remains: spreading the word. There are plenty of fish but the net needs to be cast wider.
“In Nigeria now, there is a growing middle class with disposable income to buy and invest in art but they cannot invest in what they don’t know,” says Tayo Quaye, an internationally renowned printmaker and painter.
Auction houses need to build confidence in potential clients, to recognize the value of art and invest accordingly. This is a challenge being tackled by Kavita Chellaram, CEO of Arthouse Contemporary.
“The main obstacle we saw at the creation of Arthouse Contemporary was the absence of a secondary market for art acquisitions. While art collectors were already engaging artists to buy from the primary market, there was a question mark on the return of its value. Our auctions seek to fill this gap in making the art business justify itself in Nigeria,” says Chellaram.
Even if Nigeria’s middle class started to appreciate art, it remains to be seen whether they could be persuaded to buy it. If contemporary Nigerian art pricing trends are anything to go by, they may need to win the lottery. Auction houses are often the launchpad from which prices spring up; well-heeled Nigerians being more than willing participants in the hobby. We are a people that thrive on exhibitionism so when artwork is being vied for, it’s not always a measure of its worth but a result of financial muscle flexing. This is great for the artist but ultimately unsustainable.
Alternatively, galleries, such as Rele have fixed, inclusive prices starting at $225. There are not enough of these modestly priced artworks though. Despite this, more Nigerians are buying art, largely dictated by the depth of their pockets and their artistic leaning.
The Nigerian art industry remains an emerging market. Though the bulk of the business is done by oil magnates and well-travelled socialites in upmarket hotels and galleries, ordinary people off the street are becoming more active. Both classes of connoisseurs may yet share a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in spaces that cater for their contrasting taste and financial might – a picture-perfect frame of good business. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3642" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/image1-300x196.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="196" />

Art Needs To Play To The Gallery

Contemporary art created by African artists in Africa and abroad has long been recognized across the African continent – yet failed to make any international impact.
Thankfully that has spectacularly changed, and over the past few years, African art has hit a tipping point.
For instance, shimmering bottle top wall-hangings by Ghanaian sculptor El Anutsui decorated the exterior of the Royal Academy in London last year and his work New World Map sold for £541,250 ($873,400) in 2012.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29642 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006-211x300.jpg" alt="" width="211" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006-211x300.jpg 211w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006-300x427.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006-600x853.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006.jpg 720w" sizes="(max-width: 211px) 100vw, 211px" />
But while renowned artists such as El Anutsui and Ibrahim El-Salahi from Sudan have broken through the international ceiling and are bought by museums in London and New York, most African artists remain invisible to the West because they don’t exhibit there.
Art entrepreneur Touria El Glaoui quickly realized when she traveled through Africa on business that she saw “amazing talent and amazing art” yet there was no international platform for those artists, only “a huge gap”.
So last year she came to London, which is at the heart of the international art market, and set up 1:54, London’s first contemporary art fair dedicated to visual art from Africa.
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Same time as Frieze Week
El Glaoui timed it to coincide with Frieze Week, a landmark on the London art calendar attended by 70,000 art buyers.
“The artists we showed were both established and more up and coming, but perhaps they didn’t have a gallery, they didn’t have representation, they hadn’t yet been collected by a museum,” she says.
Although a risk at the time, piggybacking Frieze Week proved a great success. The art, sculpture and photography on sale at 1:54 was priced between £2,000 ($3,200) and £200,000 ($322,000), and the 14 exhibiting galleries sold every single item and played host to 6,000 visitors including the great and good of the art world.
Those collectors who turned up late found all the works had been sold and actually complained ‘why didn’t you bring more work with you to sell?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, given last year’s success, 1:54 is back in October, with 85 artists sold through 27 galleries, and this time has taken two wings of Somerset House in Central London.
So what led El Glaoui to become an art entrepreneur with a passion for helping artists from Africa build an international career?
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Learnings from dad
El Glaoui was born into a family of artists in Morocco, and her 90-year-old father is Hassan El Glaoui, one of Morocco’s most famous living figurative painters. This, and the fact that she has been dealing with galleries on behalf of her father for 15 years, gave her instant credibility in the art world.
She has learned hugely from the experiences of her father, who quickly established himself in Paris, but chose to return to Morocco to paint in 1965. He took a long time to rebuild an international reputation.
“Of course today, my father sells in the secondary market at Christies and Sotheby’s, but an international gallery would have changed where he is in terms of pricing.”
She is keen to share this insider’s knowledge of dealing with galleries and the international art market with up and coming and more established artists from Africa.
“All artists would prefer to be considered mainstream artists, and I know what’s needed for them to succeed.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29641 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004-300x223.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="223" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004-300x223.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004-600x445.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004-768x570.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
El Glaoui explains that the price which collectors are willing to pay for art is to a large extent influenced by factors such as having an agent and a gallery to promote an artist internationally, having work bought by influential museums and private collectors, and also by winning art prizes.
Linking artist with collector is critical, and so El Glaoui is excited to have recently signed a deal for 1:54 content to be exhibited on Artsy, the New York based online art gallery which links 250,000 subscribers with established galleries and artists around the world.  This will give her artists a global platform for sales and recognition.
Putting African art on the map is just what she intends to do, and El Glaoui has ambitions to replicate the Fair in other countries, the obvious next location being New York. Finally, once the 1:54 brand is well established she would like to bring the 1:54 Fair back to Africa.

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Putting African Art On The Map

The international buzz around contemporary African art has never been louder.
African art has always been celebrated on the African continent, but has singularly failed to be regarded as collectible by most Western mainstream collectors and museums. The most important art works created in Africa have long been considered to be antique and traditional.
Modern African art’s exclusion from the Western mainstream has been controversial, so the pace of change in 2013 has been exhilarating. Major museums in London and New York have showcased leading African artists and have been buying their work enthusiastically.
Dramatic installation art pieces—three-dimensional works that are often created in exhibition spaces—by Ghanaian artist El Anutsui are being displayed by major museums both sides of the Atlantic. And London’s Tate Modern, a leader in art trends internationally, has recently set up an African Art Acquisitions Committee to purchase works by contemporary African artists, an acknowledgment that the Tate’s permanent collection was too focused on Western European and North American art.
The Venice Biennale, possibly the world’s most influential contemporary art exhibition, had record attendances from African countries last year, with the leading prize, the Golden Lion, going to the Angolan pavilion, a major boost for African contemporary art.
It all adds up to a sneaking suspicion that this is the age when African art truly becomes collectible.
Ask Bonhams, the only international auction house to specialize in contemporary African art, and they will tell you the African market is booming. Buyers include international museums and private collectors from Europe, the United States and particularly from Nigeria. And Bonhams deny that it’s a bubble.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31298" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-300x150.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="150" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-300x150.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-600x300.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-768x384.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
For the last five years, Bonhams have held their annual Africa Now auction.
“Five years ago it was difficult. We didn’t know who our prospective buyers were, we had no mailing list, and it was a daunting prospect,” says auctioneer Giles Peppiatt, the director of contemporary African art at Bonhams.
“Contrast that with our latest sale in May last year which was our most successful yet, we smashed 20 world records for prices made by an artist and we sold 91% of items up for sale. In total we achieved £1.3 million ($2.1 million),” says Peppiatt.
“We sold seven wooden sculptures, made by Ben Enwonwu for the Daily Mirror newspaper in 1960, for £360,000 ($580,000) against an estimate of £80,000 ($129,000) to £120,000 ($194,000).”
Bonhams most notable moment came in May 2012 when an El Anutsui wall hanging made from bottle tops welded together with copper wire sold for £542,000 ($890,000). It is the highest price yet paid for African art at auction.
It’s not surprising that prices for El Anatsui, a celebrated Ghanaian artist living and working in Nigeria, are rocketing. His massive sheets of shimmering bottle top installation art have been bought by major galleries, and last summer he won a major art prize, the Charles Wollaston Award, for his giant installation draped outside the Royal Academy exhibition in London.
Major events in Africa focusing purely on contemporary African Art have been building interest for years. The Joburg Art Fair is well established and has been dedicated to selling living African artists’ work since 2008. The Dak’Art Biennale goes back to 1992, providing a creative platform in Dakar, Senegal for more than 20 years.
International art buyers with deep pockets descend on London during Frieze Week in October, and the auction houses and exhibitions compete to take money from them. This year they are joined by 1:54, a new art fair that was launched in Europe, to take the unique energy from the current African art scene and to sell directly to global collectors in London.
1:54 is the brainchild of Touria El Glaoui, the daughter of respected Moroccan artist Hassan El Glaoui.
“By hosting this fair in Somerset House in central London our intention is to foster exchange between artists, curators, collectors and the public from all backgrounds and nationalities,” says El Glaoui.
The fair has been named after the 54 nations that make up Africa, and aims to represent all countries and styles, as well as artists from the African diaspora.
Edson Chagas, the Angolan photographer whose work became the basis for the winning Angolan Venice Biennale pavilion, is one of 70 artists represented at 1:54, as is Abdoulaye Diarrasouba, known as Aboudia, from Cote d’Ivoire.
Several of Aboudia’s large-scale acrylic on canvas paintings have been bought by the Saatchi Gallery and are soon to appear in a Saatchi exhibition. His style is inspired by graffiti and depicts street life and the traumas of war.
Aboudia was born and worked in Cote d’Ivoire’s capital Abidjan until the most recent civil war in 2010. Now he moves between Abidjan and New York.
“I’m exhibiting at the 1:54 fair because I feel it’s important to show my work to people abroad and to venture beyond the Ivory Coast,” he says.
Aboudia thinks others should follow the example of Charles Saatchi, the owner of the Saatchi Gallery.
“He has the courage to search for new things and nurture them. He doesn’t wait until [artists’] careers have already been developed. Life is about taking risks. Emerging artists benefit from being brought to the world’s attention,” he says.
The fact that quality African art is being widely bought by leading galleries is music to the ears of Oba Nsugbe, a leading Nigerian barrister working in Britain. He is a member of the Tate Modern African Art Acquisitions Committee, which is responsible for delivering a detailed strategy to purchase world class African art.
“This would have been impossible to conceive 10 or 15 years ago. We are placing African art alongside other world class art where it belongs—to be conserved in a world-class forum. What more do you want?”   FL

El-Anatsui-Bonhams-Africa-Now

The Smart Money is  on African Art

Contemporary artist Kudzanai Chiurai is no stranger to controversy. When he drew a picture of Robert Mugabe’s face in flames, after the contested results of the 2008 Zimbabwean elections, he received calls asking him everything from who he was to the meaning and message of his artwork. Chiurai is now in self-imposed exile, he hasn’t been home since 2003, when he was 22.
Now, Chiurai lives in an inner-city loft apartment in east Johannesburg. It’s open-plan, except for the bedroom. His clothes are drying on top of tables and chairs, and vinyl music records are stacked up near the lit fireplace. Art and history books line the shelves.
The softly-spoken 32-year-old is reserved but his work speaks volumes. It caught the eye of British singer Elton John, who bought seven photographs from his Black President collection. But the quiet Chiurai doesn’t seem fazed by the hype that surrounded the purchase.
“It is cool. It’s not like I’ll ever meet Elton John. It’s nice that he bought photographs, but it’s nice that some of my friends bought my posters and have been collecting posters that I’ve made,” says Chiurai.
He was thrilled with the invitation to exhibit at the world-famous documenta exhibition in Germany last year.
“It’s an amazing invitation,” says Chiurai.
This was the 13th exhibition since 1955. It only takes place every five years and a mere 100 artists are invited from around the world. Chiurai was invited along with South Africa’s most celebrated artist William Kentridge and Zanele Muholi, a photographer and visual activist.
<div id="attachment_31128" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31128" class="size-medium wp-image-31128" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Artist Kudzanai Chiurai  </div>
“It’s huge… If you show at documenta you’re made as an artist,” says Londi Nzimande-Modiko from the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg.
Chiurai uses different media like posters, sculptures, short films, drawing and paintings in his work.
His latest work, Conflict Resolution, was shown at documenta as well as in Johannesburg. It was a collection that was easier to admire than to describe. It contained posters of his own identification document, another of a half-naked woman wearing nothing but her bra, and another of a log with Chiurai’s own face embedded in it with five machetes wedged into it. Yet another is a poster of him with a flaming tyre around his neck.
His supporters are twenty-somethings; you can spot them at the arty Thesis Social Jam sessions on Sunday afternoons or at exhibitions, music festivals and fashion shows. They wear clothes that your grandmother used to wear paired with anything from Dr. Martens boots to high heels. The men wear fedoras and many of the women have the sides of their heads shaved; there are turbans and pierced noses everywhere in a vibrant crowd that prefers to call the artist “Kudzi”.
It has been a long road for the first black student to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria. His love for art stemmed from primary school, and now he makes a living from it. His cheapest work sold was R200 ($20) and the most expensive went for R200,000 ($20,000).
“It’s sustainable if you work with a good gallery. There is a sense of independence within all institutions. The relationship between [you] and the broker you work with is not always a perfect relationship. We are all sort of part of some institution whether we like it or not,” says Chiurai.
Chiurai is very confident when he talks about his work. His latest achievement is having his short film Iyeza, an allegory of the Last Supper depicting the establishment of a new nation-state, exploring the African condition by juxtaposing the past and the present of a continent in the grip of violent civil wars. It was selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Multimedia is the name of the game and Chiurai is playing it. His previous exhibition, State of the Nation—of which Iyeza was part—received a lot attention. It referenced “child soldiers, African liberation movements, and civil wars. He tracks the similarities in the societal, political and ideological fabric of states in tumultuous times of transition,” according to the Goodman Gallery.
Aside from multimedia, Chiurai is always looking for a different way to tell stories. His first exhibition had a twist to it. He used multimedia and the viewing public.
“I made a couple of short films that I projected onto screens and I made four drawings and then I left them in people’s apartments… so they completed them. Then I collected all of them, [and] then the people who lived in those apartments came to the exhibition…  It was fun and interesting.”
“I was never trained in making film or photography… they were kind of like the leading mediums that grab our attention and it’s always interesting, how you can use them,” he says.
Soon he’ll be taking part in an exhibition that will tour the United States and Europe and end in Harare in 2016. So, it seems Chiurai’s art will be making noise in his mother country once again. It will be interesting to see what the authorities will think this time.   FL

369-14_1

The Man Who Painted Flames On Mugabe’s Face

The hustle of the noisy, crowded, streets of Lagos is spawning a raw sound that is catching the ear of the world. They call it Nigerian urban music and it could be a gold mine.
Twenty million people-a-month, in 98 countries, tune into Nigerian urban music on YouTube and the numbers are rising rapidly.
“Nigerian urban contemporary music is about young, powerful, trendy, attitude-driven Africans who are not talking about poverty, exclusion or famine. They are saying we’re the new world, the new way, get in with it or forget it,” says Obi Asika, CEO of Storm Records—a leading entertainment company—who also sits on the board of COSON—Copyright Society of Nigeria.
<div id="attachment_1136" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1136" class="wp-image-1136 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MI_Bubbles-Magazine-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" />M.I</div>
Nigeria is in a prime position to take advantage of this music. It has some of the finest recording studio technology in Africa and a thriving home market on which to test new sounds. The only problem is corruption and rampant music piracy, which threatens the growth of this vibrant Nigerian music.
Asika says the deterrents to growth are regulation, copyright and piracy issues, which leave artists with a lack of income from record sales.
“It is a constant battle but we are making a lot of progress,” he says.
“If you give Nigeria the same resources the Americans have, we will have full domination of the entertainment scene. This is a fact because they don’t have the story. We have a unique story, a unique culture, a unique urban identity and it is in high demand.”
One of the problems is the average Nigerian musician’s recordings can be bought at the side of the road in Lagos traffic, for a pittance. It means concerts and live shows are the moneymakers.
<div id="attachment_1137" style="width: 194px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1137" class="wp-image-1137 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Tu-Face_Now-Musik-184x300.jpg" alt="" width="184" height="300" />Tu Face</div>
For this reason, the United Sounds of Africa—a music project taking African talent on a seven city tour of North America—was created. On tour will be: Tuface; M.I; Jesse Jagz; Ice Prince; Brymo; Timi Dakolo and J.Martins. They will play in Atlanta; Houston; Washington; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago and Toronto.

Twenty Million People Can’t Be Wrong

A swift 30 minutes’ drive from Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos leads you to Lekki suburbs, home to the Nike Art Centre, a busy double-story building that keeps some of the best and most treasured contemporary artwork in Nigeria.
The white halls, decorated with castings of Yoruba art patterns, mimicking the unique techniques of indigo cloth dyeing, also known as Adire, display some of the 7,000 odd artistic works in this gallery.
The award-winning Nike Davies-Okundaye and her husband worked hard over decades to build a business enterprise that spans the whole of Nigeria.
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Mama Nike, as she is popularly known, needs no introduction. She is one of Nigeria’s best known art entrepreneurs. Her life story rivals the drama and intrigue of classic novelist Charles Dickens’ characters—deprived orphans prodding through life against the back-drop of an ugly world, but eventually making a success of themselves at the end.
Okundaye lost her mother and grandmother at a young age. Still her misfortunes, that virtually rendered her an orphan, didn’t rein in her urge to work hard. Even with hard work her business struggled for many years to take off owing to a lack of interest in the arts by many people. Numerous other factors, including politics, contributed to her challenges. At one stage tension between the government and artists ran so high that it stifled creativity in the country. But as luck would have it, Mama Nike met her current husband who was then a senior police administrator. His influence led to the antagonism easing out and artists provided new platforms and opportunities for expression.
Okundaye started her business in 1968 as a textile artist in Kogi. At that point she used her bedroom as a gallery. She eventually moved to Oshogbo, the headquarters of her business empire today. Since then, her business has expanded and has branches in Ogidi, the capital Abuja and Lagos. The Lagos art gallery, completed in 2009, is where she generates most of the revenue that supports the operating costs of her other business centers.
“In Nigeria, only oil is discovered but good artists aren’t. My aim is to discover artists and to showcase their beautiful work in our country and in Africa as a whole” says Mama Nike.
Her art centres reveal prospect for the economic benefits that can be reaped through art in a country that offers limited opportunities for artists. They conduct workshops where art students learn the practical aspects of indigo cloth dyeing. The students are all women from surrounding poor, rural communities.
Although it costs a premium to teach, house and feed each one, the women do not pay a penny. Okundaye covers their expenses. Mama Nike also supports these women by selling their artwork on their behalf at her gallery in Lagos.
The Lagos Art Gallery caters for both first-time and seasoned art collectors with artwork prices ranging from $62 to $ 38,000.
In this gallery, some of the most sought-after artworks by well-known contemporary Nigerian artists fill the walls. The displays of painter Rom Isichei, well known for high textured surface of oil or acrylic and outstanding skill in the use of colors, take up a whole wall. The adjacent wall showcases Kunle  Adegborioye’s latest works, which capture the essence of the current political and socio-economic issues in Nigeria. The displays provide an artistic vision that depicts real life and mythical stories of hope and despair.
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The gallery has made 60-year-old Okundaye’s business one of the most promising art enterprises in Nigeria. The sizable tourism industry has benefited her business in many ways. Over the years, tourists, excluding the international art collectors, have been the main consumers of her artwork. To cater for this demand, Okundaye has created a tourist paradise in each of the other three centers, namely Oshogbo, Abuja and Ogidi. The centers offer three services: guided tours, inexpensive lodges and arts exhibitions. A visit to the Oshogbo center, for example, would be more than just about her artwork. It would give a full exploration of ancient Yoruba culture. Oshgobo, in the cocoa-producing region, provides an awe-inspiring experience. The environment is enriched by the presence of internationally known artists such as Jimoh Buraimoh, Jacob Afolabi and Chief Oloruntoba.
Mama Nike believes that things would be rosier for her business if people understood the investment value of art. “You can use art as collateral at the bank and as a stock,” she explains.
Her second last daughter, Allyson-Aina Davies, recently returned from England, is planning to tap into the potential the creative industry in Nigeria and Africa has to offer. As the managing director of the Lagos gallery, she will be in charge of over 7,000 artworks of Nigeria’s finest in the industry.
The value of the creative industry is about to explode now that international and local art collectors are recognizing the investment value in Nigerian art. The 2010 UNESCO report on the creative industry indicated that “…the large majority of developing countries are not yet able to harness their creative capacity for development. This is a reflection of weaknesses both in domestic policy and in the business environment, and global systemic biases.” Benedict Enwonwu’s piece titled Underwater Still Life made waves in 2008 when it fetched $27,788 at Bonhams in London, exceeding the pre-estimates phenomenally. Two years later, Nigerian artwork was still attracting cash and collectors abroad. At the first commercial auction of artworks from sub-Saharan Africa in the United States (New York), the five most expensive pieces were from Nigeria. One of Ben Enwonwu’s paintings went for $91,000.
International interest in Nigerian art has also sparked interest locally over the past five years. The banking and the oil and gas sectors created dollar millionaires in Nigeria and out of this select group a few individual collectors have emerged. Recently, the Ben Enwonwu Foundation hosted a workshop on art as an alternative investment. Prince Yemisi Shyllon, Nigeria’s biggest collector whose collection at his house can take more than a day to view, was in attendance. He says in Nigeria “Art could be a form of investment, and is growing tremendously.” Commercial art auctions were not common in Nigeria until 07 March 2008 when Kavita Chellarams hosted the first commercial art auction in Lagos. Since then Chellarams’ Art House Contemporary has hosted seven auctions with average sales tallies exceeding 70% by volume per event. Among several of Mama Nike’s artworks that featured at these auctions were the piece entitled Village Market Scene which fetched $8,750; an untitled piece by Tola Wewe sold at $16,666; and the unsold Poetic Pattern of Love with an estimated value between $5,260 and $6,580.
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Developing interest in Nigerian and African art both locally and internationally is certainly Mama Nike’s intention. Until her dreams are achieved she is unlikely to put her feet up or hit the golf course.

Tag: contemporary

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