Aindrea Emelife to Curate Nigerian Pavilion at Venice 2024
Aindrea Emelife, curator of the Nigerian Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Courtesy Aindrea Emelife.
Nigeria will present works by eight artists in a group show at the 60th Venice Biennale next year.
The exhibition, titled Nigeria Imaginary, will be presented in a historical Palazzo in Dorsoduro, near the Gallerie dell’Accademia.
The pavilion will be curated by Aindrea Emelife, whose exhibition Black Venus just opened to great reviews at Somerset House in London.
‘Nigeria Imaginary looks at the many Nigerias that live in our minds: the Nigeria that could be and is yet to be,’ Emelife said. ‘The exhibition will explore different perspectives and constructed ideas, memories of, and nostalgia for Nigeria, with a scope that is cross-generational and inter-geographic.’
The eight participating artists are: Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Ndidi Dike, Onyeka Igwe, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Abraham Oghobase, Precious Okoyomon, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, and Fatimah Tuggar.
‘The artists were selected for their unique visions of Nigeria, with a mixture of artists brought up in Nigeria and within the Diaspora curated to capture a sense of optimism imbued in inherited and collective cultural history,’ Emelife added.
‘This exhibition, envisioned by Ms. Emelife with a diverse roster of accomplished artists, encourages us to revisit the past in order to create a bright future for Nigeria,’ said Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki, who will serve as commissioner for the pavilion.
An expanded presentation of the Nigerian Pavilion will travel to the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), where Emelife is a curator, in Benin City in 2025. —[O]
Main image: Aindrea Emelife, curator of the Nigerian Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Courtesy Aindrea Emelife.
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