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Curator's Note

A ring of white light, one eye flaring like a star, an ochre robe over a bare shoulder. Dayo paints Christ as a young African man with a fu…

Curator's Note

The power here is in the angle: she is turned away from us, looking forward. Then you find the map of Africa inked on her neck, and the por…

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…

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

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

Before it was a square it was a racecourse, and the horses never left. Anth Ezeokoye puts the rearing horse statues at the centre of the gr…

Curator's Note

Of Toni Kuyinu's three royals, only the king keeps his eyes open, and he wears round wire glasses. A thoroughly modern young man, crowned w…

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

The molue at the front of this picture has mostly left Lagos roads, which is exactly why it belongs here. Anth Ezeokoye parks the old Merce…

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

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

The centrepiece of Toni Kuyinu's royal trio, and the only face that meets us head-on, yet his eyes are closed. Nothing is being claimed or …