Around 1910, the King of Ikere commissioned the artist Olowe of Ise to create a wooden door for his palace. Carved in bas-relief and painted, it was meant to remember a meeting with a British official a few years prior. At the time, the British administration had begun colonising the lands that would eventually become Nigeria. Olowe presented Captain Ambrose as a small, pleading man in the presence of the solemn figure of the king, who is surrounded by his court. This masterwork of Yoruba art demonstrates how, contrary to European belief, African civilisations’ art underwent stylistic, technical and iconographic modifications. The door later ended up in the British Museum’s holdings and is now on display as part of the Tate Modern’s major exhibition on the history and significant players of Nigerian modern art.
Aina Onabolu, “Portrait of an African Man”, 1955. © Aina Onabolu. Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Pan-Atlantic University, courtesy Tate Modern, London
Running until May 10, Nigerian Modernism is an ambitious attempt to trace nearly a century of art from the early twentieth century to the 1990s in one of Africa’s most fascinating countries in terms of historical complexity and cultural richness, which is currently embarking on a major initiative to promote its heritage and strengthen its identity. Osei Bonsu, Ghanaian, who was recently named curator of Tate’s International Art, Africa and Diaspora, and his assistant Bilal Akkouche worked on the exhibition over a three-year period. It’s undoubtedly astonishing to see it held in the heart of the country’s capital, which officially subjugated the regions and civilisations living inside the ‘Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria’ beginning in 1914. In addition to the museum’s clear attempt to pursue a decolonization process – something that Tate Modern appears to have been engaged in for some time – the decision to stage this exhibition was motivated by the fact that Nigeria had a vibrant cultural scene that made it a crossroads of West African cultures and a meeting place for artists from all over the world.
“Nigerian Modernism”, Tate Modern, 8 October 2025 – 10 May 2026, installation view, © Tate Photography (Jai Monaghan), courtesy Tate Modern, London
Why modernism? The curator explains that it was necessary to fill historiographic gaps, restoring to Nigeria the narrative of the artistic developments that followed the violent rupture caused by colonization, through independence and the early decades of the post-colonial era – a period marked by a complex and difficult history due to the civil war. Above all, it was vital to show how the subject of ‘modern’ art was central to the cultural debate and artistic investigations of Nigeria’s prominent figures during the cultural renaissance. It is impossible to understand the meaning of ‘modernism’ here if we approach it exclusively from a Eurocentric lens. The exhibition demonstrates that the notion of modernity is not just confined to Western countries and highlights the diverse values and meanings it may embody according on context.
Bruce Onobrakpeya, “The Last Supper”, 1981. © reserved. Tate Collection. Installation view, Nigerian Modernism, Tate Modern, 8 October 2025 – 10 May 2026 © Tate Photography (Jai Monaghan), courtesy Tate Modern, London
Adriano Pedrosa’s Biennale sought to illuminate these considerations, yet they were largely disregarded by many critics, particularly in Italy. These critics, perhaps unable to investigate the history of non-European art or to transcend their own biases to evaluate again certain assumptions and embrace alternative perspectives, opted for superficial conclusions, viewing modernism in the Global South as a delayed and unnecessary replication of Western modernism. Almost all the Nigerian artists that Pedrosa first exhibited in Venice are prominently included in the Tate exhibition: Uzo Egonu, Ben Enwonwu, Sạ̀ngódáre Gbádégẹsin Àjàlá, Uche Okeke and Twins Seven-Seven.
“Nigerian Modernism”, Tate Modern, 8 October 2025 – 10 May 2026, installation view, © Tate Photography (Jai Monaghan), courtesy Tate Modern, London
Walking through the rooms of Nigerian Modernism, one comes to understand how the concept of the ‘modern’ was primarily influenced by colonial power structures – that is, by Western-centric aesthetic standards and art conceptions. At a time when colonialism was accompanied by a racist ideology that asserted the inferiority of African peoples and judged their art to be ‘primitive’ , whilst plundering it to the hilt and making it the cornerstone of that formal revolution which in fact formed the backbone of what was considered ‘modern’ art in the West, several Nigerian artists, on the contrary, embraced the European tradition of realistic figurative art, to demonstrate that they were their equals in terms of technical and inventive ability. Painting portraits and recounting the epic history of the Nigerian people in the style of Western history painting was a form of resistance against colonial rule for artists such as Aina Onabolu and Akinola Lasekan, who received a European art education during a period when the colonial administration either did not provide for art education at all or excluded local languages, between the 1920s and 1940s.
Obiora Udechukwu, “Our Journey”, 1993. © Obiora Udechukwu. Hood Museum of Art, courtesy Tate Modern, London
The exhibition proceeds from this point by investigating the artists’ endeavours to reimagine the role of art in a colonial and postcolonial society, thus shaping new visions of modernity. One of the key figures in this reinterpretation of the concept of modern Nigerian art is unquestionably Ben Enwonwu, who pioneered the revival of indigenous artistic traditions as an anti-colonial response, championing the concept of Negritude and an entire iconography associated with cultural traditions and shamanic rituals. The room dedicated to him is one of the most beautiful in the exhibition, thanks to the striking display of a series of seven big wooden sculptures commissioned by the Daily Mirror in 1960: a powerful contemporary reinterpretation of the plastic force and expressive synthesis characteristic of Igbo sculpture.
El Anatsui, “Solemn Crowds at Dawn”, 1989. © El Anatsui. Tate, courtesy Tate Modern, London
Next come the rooms dedicated to the Zaria Art Society, founded in 1958, and the Mbari Club, established in Ibadan in 1961, just one year after Nigeria gained independence from Great Britain. Uche Okeke was active in both groups; he was the father of the concept of ‘natural synthesis’, which inspired an artistic movement aiming at merging Nigerian traditions with European methods and techniques to create an original modern language. The most notable example on display is Bruce Onobrakpeya‘s magnificent figurative triptych, depicting ‘The Last Supper and stories from the Passion of Christ’, in which a skilled and complex engraving technique creates an effective fusion of Christian iconography and Yoruba decorative style. Another remarkable revival of local art has been spearheaded by Uche Okeke, who developed a new and successful visual language inspired by the traditional ‘uli’ artistic practices of Igbo women in south-eastern Nigeria – namely body paintings and murals featuring abstract, sinuous linear forms derived from nature.
Uzo Egonu, “Will Knowledge Safeguard Freedom 2”, 1985. © Estate of Uzo Egonu. Tiana and Vikram Chellaram, courtesy Tate Modern, London
Okeke learned the method from his mother and introduced it to younger groups of artists when he became a teacher in the art department at the University of Nsukka. Obiora Udechukwu pursued his education there; his expansive four-panel painting ‘Our Journey’ (1993) is currently on exhibit. This work employs an ostensibly abstract and symbolic language to address social and political concerns. And it was there, in the same University of Nsukka, that the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui arrived in 1975 to assume a teaching position. It is extremely interesting to situate this great artist, who is now widely recognized, within the context that helped shape his style, thanks to the Uli aesthetic. This is exemplified by two works from the early 1990s – carved with a chainsaw and painted – in which one can already discern a tendency to create abstract structures composed of minimal elements that repeat themselves regularly. The exhibition’s concluding room is dedicated to the Nigerian diaspora, which is represented by Uzo Egonu, who received his education in England and has continued to be active in the country. In his large-scale paintings, Egonu portrays the alienated condition of those who chose exile abroad because of the challenging situation, which was characterized by severe social conflict and corruption, in which Nigeria found itself following the civil war. These subjects are referred to as ‘Stateless People.’
“Nigerian Modernism”, Tate Modern, 8 October 2025 – 10 May 2026, installation view, © Tate Photography (Jai Monaghan), courtesy Tate Modern, London
Narrating such an extensive and intricate tale appears to be an exceedingly formidable endeavour. The exhibition sometimes fails to uphold clarity and balance in its displays, which are not sufficiently supplemented by relevant contextual information concerning the geographical distribution of artistic phenomena (aside from a brief emphasis on Lagos) or, in certain areas, are burdened by an excessive aggregation of works and artists. However, it must be acknowledged that the perception is more often that Western museums, with their standards for ‘display,’ are ill-suited to showcasing artistic forms that do not always fit within those parameters because they are characterised by fluidity, a process-oriented approach and widespread, ever-changing creativity.
Info:
AA.VV. Nigerian Modernism
8/10/2025 – 10/5/2026
Tate Modern
www.tate.org.uk
Emanuela Termine (Rome, 1978) is an art historian, lecturer and independent researcher. In 2010, she earned a PhD in Art History from Sapienza University of Rome. She worked as a curator at Sala 1, the International Center for Contemporary Art, Rome (2006-2015), and as head of the organizational secretariat of the Bruno Zevi Foundation, Rome (2005-2014). Since 2014, she has collaborated with art journals, writing art criticism. She is the author of the Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Carlo Maria Mariani (Allemandi, 2021) and of essays published in scholarly journals such as “La Diana,” “Valori Tattili,” and “Rossocorpolingua”.
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