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Curator's Note

Toni Kuyinu's gold usually crowns kings and queens. Here it rings the closed eye of a girl holding a single white feather to her face. It i…

Curator's Note

Two young men lean their heads together until they almost touch. Divine Momoh marks each face differently, a zigzag and spiral on one, a lo…

Curator's Note

The collar is the detail to find: wide, white and a little old-fashioned, worn with complete confidence. Ekundayo keeps her face in quick p…

Curator's Note

A homage in the caricaturist's language: Fela at the keys, eyes shut, smoke curling, a spotlight from one side and fire rising on the other…

Curator's Note

Everything here pulls toward the pale circle at the centre, and one thin white line cuts straight through it. That line, Aiyedogbon says, i…

Curator's Note

Where ethnic sentiment is used to divide, Clement Obioha paints Nigeria's three largest peoples as one band: three instruments, three voice…

Curator's Note

For Yeko, the mask is where a people and their gods meet. Source draws a face in profile built entirely from pattern, cowries, eyes and wav…

Curator's Note

St. Clvtch gives the warrior spirit within him an ancestral face: a Benin-inspired mask honouring his Edo roots, worn over a body in heavy …

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

The most crowded of Yeko's pictures, and the most devotional. There is a great face with closed eyes, a hand lifting a small vessel, women …