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Curator's Note

Deep blue-black skin, a gold halo, heavy pearls at the throat, arms folded close. Dayo turns the figure away from us and lowers the eyes, a…

Curator's Note

There is a moment when something long known becomes clear. Mikenobi gives it a carved face, in the spirit of the Igbo carvings that give fo…

Curator's Note

In the rest of Made in Lagos a yellow sun shines over the scene. Above the Central Mosque, Anth Ezeokoye turns it into a crescent moon. It …

Curator's Note

Some women do not wait to be noticed. Ekundayo leaves her body as pencil and paints only the chartreuse dress, and her carriage does the re…

Curator's Note

The rare Ai_mayor picture with no face in it, only the surfaces he usually builds faces from. At its centre a round window splits between l…

Curator's Note

Nerome Borke gives her the darkest, calmest surface in the picture and rings it with gold. So everything restless happens around her and ne…

Curator's Note

The subject is the child. Godwin Edet Munam's masked ancestors sit with their backs to a crowned infant, guarding it, praying for it and fe…

Curator's Note

Egyptian art usually kept its kings remote. Sandro Perovic gives his pharaoh a family and lets them touch. A hand rests on a shoulder, a ba…

Curator's Note

Her eyes are closed, and that changes everything. She is not surveying a court; she is somewhere inward, chin lifted, a queen with no need …

Curator's Note

Awẹlẹwà, the slender, beautiful one, carries what Funmilayo Tejumola calls the hope of an African renaissance. Under a gold-beaded fringe h…