Incubating a Socially-Focused Art Scene

A collaborative workshop and exhibition being organised by the Nigerian-German Centre for Jobs, Migration, and Integration, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, and Artstier in Abuja, hopes to instil some entrepreneurial drive among the participants besides getting them more focused on addressing relevant issues in the society. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports 

As a much-needed programme for Abuja’s burgeoning art scene, the Made in Nigeria Art Project could not have come at a more opportune time. By now, the ten participants who will have been shortlisted for this project—which itself is the result of a collaboration between the Nigerian-German Centre for Jobs, Migration, and Integration and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, with Artstier serving as the consulting contractor—should be readying themselves for weeks of intense creative activities.

Talking about the art project, which consists of a workshop and ultimately an exhibition, it takes place in Abuja between Wednesday, April 12, and Wednesday, May 3, and is part of a larger framework of the NGC (as the Nigerian-German Centre for Jobs, Migration, and Integration is abbreviated) for providing comprehensive services to potential and returnee migrants to help them re-establish themselves at home. 

Perhaps more interestingly is the fact that this initiative, which targets the younger demographic of the creative arts community, was spurred by an online competition in which dozens of creatives submitted their works for review and curation by curators, whose brief was to select ten finalists for the workshop to be held at an Abuja vocational training facility.

A lecture series by guest artists and art writers will be held as part of this workshop, supplementing the efforts of skilled facilitators who will oversee the art-making process. Hence, on May 3, which is the workshop’s closing date, its products will be displayed at a closing event, during which the participants will be awarded certificates. By this time, it is anticipated that they will have received a lot of professional impetus to enable and empower them to use platforms for practice and showing their uworks.

According to Artstier founder and the exhibition’s curator, Obi Nwaegbe, the exhibition, whose theme is “Nigerian Workers and Their Daily Realities,” is a juried one, which will have two other artists besides himself (Adis Okoli and Amarachi Odimba) and the curator Stanley Akpoke as jurors. 

As for the guest artists scheduled for the lecture series, they are the Ahmadu Bello University-trained painter Sor Sen and the effervescent female artists Amarachi Okafor and Jacqueline Suowari. Among the art writers is Emmanuel Egwemi, who contributes to major blogs like Quora. Back to the artists, Sen, an Ahmadu Bello University MFA degree holder; Okafor, who holds a Master’s degree in sculpture and curatorial practice from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; and Suowari, a full-time ballpoint pen artist, are among the leading artists in the Abuja art scene. Egwemi, who besides being an art writer is also a curator, screenwriter and a trained facility manager, was a 2018 nominee for the Best Screenwriter for Home of New Visions, an organisation that caters for new ideas especially around creative storytelling. 

Meanwhile, the participation of Artstier in this workshop was initiated by GIZ (the abbreviation for the German Agency for International Cooperation) team leader Sandra Alonge, who contacted the Abuja-based visual arts production services and consultancy firm. “[Mrs Alonge] made enquiries about our possible interest in the programme,” Nwaegbe recalls. “This was after the instructions and questions about our pedigree on the subject in order to determine our eligibility to carry out the task.” 

Soon afterwards, a meeting was scheduled and held at the Artstier office in Abuja’s Mpape District. Nwaegbe adds that this was after Mrs Alonge conducted her own independent background checks to determine his establishment’s eligibility and whether the meeting was even necessary in the first place. 

In any case, Artstier’s track record speaks eloquently for itself. For instance, the firm has been known to host a number of events that greatly energised the Abuja art scene. Among these programmes was a week-long residency for the leading contemporary Nigerian artist Duke Asidere, which was held in June last year and included an artist’s talk, a painting workshop exercise, and an evening with the artists and young audience. 

As for GIZ, which has maintained a presence in Nigeria since 1974, it has had a country office in Abuja since 2004. Its activities in Nigeria, which are commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Foreign Office (AA), have seen it partner with other bodies. Its hosting of the first Made in Nigeria Art Programme was sometime in early May 2021 at the Lagos Passport Office in Ikoyi. 

Hence, NGC, which is managed by GIZ, has been offering assistance and individualised guidance on perspectives on employment, business, vocational training, and education in Nigeria. As one of its initiatives, the online art competition Made in Nigeria, seeks out up-and-coming artists in order to support their contribution to the sector’s development in Nigeria and ultimately to economic stability.

The current collaboration between the NGC, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, and Artstier is designed for the implementation of a workshop programme and exhibition, which Nwaegbe emphasises is aimed at nurturing home-grown creative talents as well as their counterparts among the Nigerian returnees from the diaspora.  “It is intended that the participants would gain within these three weeks the ability to define the purpose of their practice both socially and economically,” he says. “The objective here is to inject some entrepreneurial drive in them and instigate their ability to ask critical questions as well as address issues of relevant concern in the society. The Nigerian art world needs to be more emphatic and more legible about its role in society, and we have designed this programme to help the artists improve their quotient in articulation as well as in technical proficiency.”