Nigeria’s Lagos to become art, design hub as city hosts AFRICAN culture, design festival

Africa’s most populous city is aiming to become a cultural hub for the continent, as the boisterous city of Lagos hosted the AFRICAN Culture and Design festival.

Exhibits included a mix of traditional and modern art, with the goal of expanding awareness of Africa’s creative talents.

Some works were an ode to African leaders including Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and Burkina Faso’s assassinated leader Thomas Sankara.

Bisi Silva, the curator of the modern art pavilion, said “the idea is to give visitors an overview of artistic practice not only in Nigeria but across Africa and the diaspora.”

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A growing number of Nigerians are collecting art from across Africa.

With the rising cost of art materials, some schools now provide basic materials like paper and pencils to help students from less privileged homes.

“Materials that they need to acquire to get the ideas produced are not easy to come by, so most times the ideas die on paper” without such aid, said Chinyere Ndubuisi, department head at the school of fine arts at Yaba College of Technology.