By Udemma Chukwuma
Look first at the figure on the ground. At the entrance of Arami Lagos, a young man crouches on a low black plinth, a bubble wand at his lips, and from it, a stream of terracotta-toned spheres climbs toward the ceiling. Above him, two more figures leap through the air among bubbles suspended on fine wires, with the spheres growing larger the higher they rise.
Colour in Tony Nsofor’s paintings does what the crowded subjects cannot. The colours change from one painting to the next, and each canvas follows its own distinct scheme.
By Udemma Chukwuma
Calabar
is preparing for a full month of festivities as Carnival Calabar returns in December 2026 under the theme Rethinking Our Collective Destiny.
The annual celebration, widely promoted as Africa's biggest street party,
brings together music, dance, costume, visual arts, fashion, food, traditional
performances and community events, turning the Cross River State capital into
one of Nigeria's major December destinations.
The theme is Native Intelligence, which the
organisers frame as a question about whose intelligence the future is being
built on. In an age of anxious talk about artificial intelligence, that is a
sharp choice. It sets machine learning beside older, human ways of knowing,
from oral tradition to community memory, and invites African writers and
thinkers to say what they think of both.
The Book Buzz Foundation organises the festival, which was founded in 2012 and has hosted more than 1,000 writers, poets, musicians, actors, filmmakers, artists and thinkers. The guest list runs to more than 40
Lagos is in Afrobeat mode this week. Felabration, the annual tribute to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, runs from October 12 to 18 at the New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja.
The headline slots stay in the family. Femi Kuti and The Positive Force, Made Kuti and Seun Kuti and the Egypt 80 as the main acts. Guest performers include the apala exponent Musiliu Haruna Ishola, Terry Apala, Atawewe and Ice Prince. Putting a roots-music veteran next to a contemporary rapper fits the spirit of the week, which has always treated Fela’s legacy as something that keeps moving rather than something to display behind glass.
The title points to the idea that art carries the past into the present, and the sale is aimed at collectors and enthusiasts of modern and contemporary work from across the continent. Reaching a 12th edition also marks a long run for an auction house operating in Lagos.
By Udemma Chukwuma
Obinna
Adiele, a Nigerian sculptor, builds his portraits from steel wire, and
everything distinctive in his work follows from that choice. Rather than
modelling a surface, he assembles one. Straight, uniform strands are laid side
by side, cut, bent and welded into small woven planes, so each face reads as
basketry given human features. On the cheeks, forehead and neck, the direction
of the strands changes patch by patch, like parquet or plaited raffia, and the
light breaks differently across every facet. Most pieces carry a dark gunmetal
finish, which warms to copper and golden bronze in works such as Tangled in
Tradition and Olileányà.
A beach resort in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria, will soon become a studio. La Campagne Tropicana has announced the first edition of its Art Residency, a two-month programme running from 5 February to 4 April 2027 and open to artists and artisans from across Nigeria.
