Yinka Shonibare Is Giving Back to Africa Through His Art’s Sales

In April 2011, Yinka Shonibare visited the Nigerian metropolis of Lagos following an invite from celebrated curator Bisi Silva, who’d invited the London-based artist for a speak about his apply and to host a present. There was no house to mount the present Silva and Shonibare had envisioned, however the journey ended up being formative another way.

Whereas in Lagos, the place he grew up, Shonibare realized that though town had an abundance of inventive expertise, there was no corresponding infrastructure to foster it. In 2019, in an effort to assist fill that hole, Shonibare began the nonprofit Visitor Artists House (G.A.S.) Basis in Nigeria. (The muse developed out of the Guest Projects initiative based in 2008 by Shonibare in London.)

In 2022, after building and delay brought on partly by the Covid-19 pandemic, the native launch was held and the G.A.S. Fellowship Award, an annual initiative in collaboration with the Yinka Shonibare Basis to assist mid-career artists and curators throughout Africa was introduced.  

Profitable the award was “very affirming [and] validating… It felt just like the work I used to be doing was acknowledged,” stated 2024 honoree Amanda Iheme, citing the considerably acquainted experiences of artists not getting grants, awards, or residences that they apply for—particularly in a local weather when one’s fame and one’s inventive issues can affect who finally wins out. She added that she favored that it was an area residency—she’d been desirous to take part in a program positioned within the place the place her work is targeted.

Throughout her time in residency, Iheme gave herself “the chance to attempt one thing totally different for my profession, to increase past what I sometimes do” as an structure photographer. Although she had already labored as a scientific researcher, she stated the residency allowed her to increase her analysis abilities as an artist.

“The residency gave me an opportunity to increase my profession past simply pictures and to see my inventive work as a apply. I believe that the residency at G.A.S. has actually helped me not simply consider myself as a creator but in addition consider myself as a data creator—an individual who makes artwork but in addition on the similar time contributes and expands the data that exists across the topic of focus.”  

Describing itself as being “devoted to facilitating worldwide inventive change,” the muse has two amenities. Its foremost constructing, G.A.S. Lagos Residency, has areas for lodging, occasions and studios, hosts residencies and packages that assist analysis and apply developments of artwork and design practitioners from Africa and the world. The muse additionally owns the G.A.S. Farm Home residency on a 54-acre plot in Ijebu in Ogun State; the farmhouse produces crops together with cassava, tomatoes, maize, pawpaw, and pepper, and helps transdisciplinary analysis and apply in areas together with agronomy, meals sustainability, and structure.  

G.A.S. Foundation welcomed its first resident, curator and researcher Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock in 2022, and has since hosted near 100 rising to established artists and curators, together with Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Portia Zvavahera, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Emma Prempeh, Pleasure Labinjo, Evan Ifekoya, and Osei Bonsu for as much as three months in Nigeria.

The muse is funded by each patrons and Shonibare himself, who directs cash from the gross sales of his artwork to G.A.S. Basis. “I all the time assist the working of the residency,” Shonibare informed ARTnews. “I give them a sure sum of money yearly so we will preserve the muse going.”

His work was one of many first issues guests noticed ultimately yr’s Venice Biennale, and final yr, he had an acclaimed present at London’s Serpentine Galleries. He’s been nominated for the Turner Prize, elected a Royal Academician, awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Now, he’s having an exhibition at Fondation H in Madagascar, in what’s being billed as his greatest solo present to this point in Africa.

Does he consider what he’s doing with the G.A.S. Basis as giving again, given his place as a longtime artist?

“Completely!” stated Shonibare with the conviction of somebody who finds fulfilment in having the ability to assist artists in Nigeria, throughout Africa and its diaspora. “It’s about giving again to society [because] no one’s profitable on their very own.”

Already, Shonibare’s basis has considerably helped artists based mostly in international locations whose artwork scenes are nonetheless rising. Later this yr, for instance, the multidisciplinary Malagasy artist Joey Aresoa might be in residency at G.A.S. Basis in Nigeria. It’s her first worldwide residency, and a direct results of a partnership Shonibare established with Fondation H. Thought of the primary personal modern artwork basis in Madagascar, the muse was established by French-Malagasy collector and businessman Hassanein Hiridjee.

Aresoa will have the ability to entry the “wonderful library that they’ve on the [G.A.S.] basis, and can work together with probably the most attention-grabbing and difficult individuals so she might be modified ceaselessly,” Margaux Huille, director of Fondation H, informed ARTnews. “And he or she already is aware of it. She already expresses the truth that she is aware of this expertise goes to alter her.”

The G.A.S. Basis is said to Shonibare’s sculptures and installations, which discover historical past from the perspective of Africa.  He’s recognized for artworks adorned with Dutch wax print cloth comparable to The African Library (2018), the big set up of 6, 000 books wrapped up within the materials. The work highlights people together with those that helped form postcolonial Africa like Dr Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Nelson Mandela (South Africa), Patrice Lumumba (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso.) Now a part of Fondation H’s everlasting assortment and featured in Shonibare’s exhibition, on view by way of February 28, 2026, on the basis’s revamped colonial period constructing in Antananarivo, the work is supplemented by a digital interface with biography of those personalities in languages together with Malagasy.  

“What he’s finished in relation to narrative has been enormously necessary. When it comes to truly serving to us to craft an in depth understanding of our previous and who was there to attempt to form it and defend it,” Gus Casely-Hayford OBE, director of London’s V&A East and the previous director of the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of African Artwork, informed ARTnews. “However moreover, accumulatively, his physique of labor is an extremely cathartic factor. To have work that speaks so powerfully to a previous that was so denied that they really constructed entire philosophical approaches to attempt to negate is simply so uplifting and deeply inspiring. After which in fact, there’s its sheer lyrical magnificence, which simply provides to it.”

Shonibare’s artwork is probably the most public-facing a part of his work, however in accordance with Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, an artwork historian and a curator within the Museum of Fashionable Artwork’s portray and sculpture division, it’s just one portion of his apply.

Nzewi referred to as Shonibare “one of the crucial perceptive artists” of the twenty first Century and stated that he has finished “rather a lot as an artist. However much more so, I believe his legacy might be that of giving again by way of the G.A.S. Basis the place he’s making an attempt to assist stimulate the ecosystem on the continent by having the ability to create this cultural dialogue that connects the context of Nigeria and Africa with the remainder of the world,” Nzewi informed ARTnews. “And he’s doing that in a really sturdy manner. Doing it in methods that may parallel any establishment elsewhere. And I believe that’s actually necessary. We want this vital infrastructure on the continent, working at a really worldwide customary.”

Because it was established, G.A.S. Basis has performed initiatives comparable to Re: assemblages, a multiyear cultural growth program targeted on the preservation and artistic potential of African artwork libraries in collaboration with archivists, librarians, artists, curators and cultural establishments. Programming for this yr’s version contains the launch of the African Arts Libraries Lab, an initiative to foster intra-African and international collaboration on African and Afro-diasporic library collections, and a two-day symposium on November 4 and 5 throughout Lagos Artwork Week.

In partnership with the Yinka Shonibare Fondation, G.A.S. Basis collaborated on Artwork Alternate: Shifting Picture with LUX, a UK arts basis supporting and selling visible artists working with shifting picture. The collaborative, cross-cultural initiative was launched in 2023 to assist the skilled growth of early to mid-career curators from the continent working within the medium.  

Shonibare’s G.A.S. Basis is one among many impartial artwork areas which have sprung up in West Africa previously couple a long time, constructing on ones comparable to Bisi Silva’s Centre for Modern Arts, Lagos, Koyo Kouoh’s RAW Materials Firm in Dakar, Senegal and Ibrahim Mahama’s Purple Clay Studio and the Savannah Centre for Modern Arts in Tamale, Ghana.

All of those areas have helped to increase their respective artwork scenes, and now, G.A.S. seems to do one thing comparable and past. It has already inked partnerships with Goodman Gallery, South London Gallery, Tiwani Modern, College of the Arts London and ART X Lagos on numerous initiatives and initiatives. And although G.A.S. is comparatively new, some stated its actions had already been key. Huille, the Fondation H director, stated Shonibare’s contributions, each by way of his artwork and the G.A.S. Basis, are “gigantic.”