Dafe Oboro, Belinda Win Access Art X Award, $10,000 Grant Each

Rebecca Ejifoma

Twenty-eight-year-old Nigerian artist, Dafe Oboro and Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski have won the 7th edition of the Access Art X award.

While Oboro clinched the prize for the Nigerian category, Kazeem-Kaminski won the African/Diaspora category.

Each of the winners got $10,000 grant towards an exhibition at ART X Lagos 2023, three month residency at Gasworks, London, for the Nigeria winner).

Kazeem-Kaminski would have a three month residency at the Yinka Shonibare’s GAS Foundation alongside mentoring, support and cultural exchange opportunities.

The Founder and CEO of ART X, Ms. Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, said at a press conference that was held in Lagos on Friday, November 25, that he was delighted to present this prized opportunity to “these two exceptional artists, Dafe and Belinda, who are unique in their perspectives but are united in their ambition to shift narratives about Africa and its global diaspora.”

She highlighted that their shared objective with Access Corporation through this prize is to reinforce emerging artists at this pivotal stage in their careers.

“We aspire over time to build a core group of artists for Nigeria, Africa and the Diaspora, with the potential to become truly transformational, not just within the arts ecosystem, but within our broader communities at a social, national, continental and global level.

“We look forward to working closely with these artists on their development in the coming months, and anticipate that they will make the most of this opportunity, which culminates in their exhibitions at ART X Lagos 2023,” she added.

Oboro worked in photography and film. He draws motifs from fashion and popular culture. He also uses evocative sound and imagery to contemplate questions of masculinity, movement across time and space, and the socio-political state of contemporary Nigeria and greater Africa.

Dafe was the 2020 recipient of the Film Prize at The Future Awards Africa, and a 2020 nominee for Dazed Magazine’s Dazed100 List of people shaping youth culture.

Meanwhile, Kazeem-Kamiński is a Nigerian Vienna-based writer, artist, and researcher. Her works are rooted in Black feminist theory and have developed a research-based and process-oriented investigative practice that deals with the condition of Black life in the African diaspora.

The artists were said to have emerged winners from a pool of thousands of applications from early-career artists in Nigeria and more than 50 countries around the world.

The Access Art X Prize is an annual award for emerging artists in Nigeria, Africa and the Diaspora. It was created by ART X, the organisers of the ART X Lagos Art Fair, and is powered by Access Corporation, the parent company of Access Bank Plc.