International critic Chika Okeke-Agulu leads TSA Foundation’s art writing masterclass--The GUARDIAN

THE GUARDIAN, Lagos, June 25, 2019

Following the successful debut of the TSA Art Writing Master Class in 2018, TSA African Culture Foundation is organising the second edition of the program taking place on August 26 – 30, 2019. Dr. Chika Okeke-Agulu, international art critic and professor of art history at Princeton University, is leading the program. 

The Master Class is a one-week program for art writers, culture journalists, curators and other art professionals who wish to improve their analytical and writing skills on contemporary art. The aim of the platform is to facilitate exchange between leading voices in the arts and early to mid-career art professionals. Professor Okeke-Agulu comments that he “firmly believes that this unique program helps to produce a new generation of confident, compelling, and conscientious art writers.” 

At the second edition, participants are exposed to different approaches to art criticism and analyses through interactive lectures, exercises, and visits to art centers in the Lagos metropolis. Delicate issues will be discussed extensively, such as plagiarism, the power dynamics between artists, critics, and curators, and maintaining fundamental values in criticism in an increasingly commercial art world. The course ends in a writing project of which the results are considered for publishing. 

TSA Art Writing Master Class II is generously supported by Hydrocarbon Advisors Ltd., Angels and Muse, and the Guardian Nigeria newspaper. Through the ‘Friends of TSA African Culture Foundation’, outstanding applicants may be awarded grants to cover the workshop tuition. Female applicants and individuals from outside of Lagos, and indeed outside of Nigeria, are encouraged to apply.

For further details about the program, requirements for participating, and on how to apply, visit the TSA Art Magazine site.

https://guardian.ng/art/international-critic-chika-okeke-agulu-leads-tsa-foundations-art-writing-master-class/

Call for Applications: 
TSA Art Writing Master Class II

Application Opens: June 13, 2019

Application Deadline: July 7, 2019

Master Class Dates: August 26 – 30, 2019

Participation Fee Deadline: August 20, 2019

Following the successful debut of the TSA Art Writing Master Class in 2018, TSA African Culture Foundation is pleased to announce the second edition of the program which will take place on August 26 – 30, 2019. The facilitator is Chika Okeke-Agulu, award-winning art critic and professor of art history at Princeton University.

The TSA Art Writing Master Class is an intensive one-week program for art writers, culture journalists, curators and other art professionals from African countries who wish to improve their analytical skills and writing on modern and contemporary art. It is an uncommon platform facilitating exchange between leading voices in the arts and early to mid-career art professionals.

Leading the program for the second time, Professor Okeke-Agulu comments that “Following the very successful inaugural session last year, I very much look forward to returning for the second Art Writing Master Class. I firmly believe that this unique and intensive program will help produce a new generation of confident, compelling, and conscientious art writers for Nigeria, West Africa, and beyond.”

At the second edition, participants will be exposed to the different approaches of art criticism, art history and complexities, and how to write coherent analytical essays through interactive lectures, hands-on exercises, and visits to art exhibitions in the Lagos metropolis. They will be taught how to study art in isolation and within the broader debates of society. Delicate issues such as plagiarism, the power dynamics between artist, critic, and curator, and maintaining the fundamental ethos of criticism in an increasingly commercial art world will be extensively discussed.

The Master Class further offers opportunities for networking and access to critical resources that will enhance the participants’ careers. Like the preceding year, it promises to be productive, creative and intense. It will culminate in a writing project that will be considered for publishing in notable print and online publications.

TSA Art Writing Master Class II is generously supported by Hydrocarbon Advisors and Angels and Muse. Our media partner is The Guardian Nigeria, an award-winning and trusted newspaper in Africa. Through the friends of TSA African Culture Foundation, a limited number of outstanding applicants will be awarded grants to cover the workshop tuition. Particularly, female applicants and individuals from cities outside Lagos are encouraged to apply for this competitive grant. If you would like to benefit from this endowment, please include such request in your letter of motivation to be considered. Details of the grant donors are available to applicants and to the general public at the beginning of the program.

Who can apply?

Art writers, culture journalists, practising curators and curatorial scholars, interested final year undergraduates as well as fresh graduates and art & culture bloggers. Previous participants are encouraged to apply.

Benefits to participants:

–    Improving their understanding of art and visual literacy.

–    Developing simple, precise and coherent language for art analysis.

–    Learning how to develop content, argument, and a compelling voice in art criticism.

–    The opportunity of a one-on-one with the lead facilitator to discuss their individual challenges in the field of art and possible solutions.

–    The opportunity to write for art publications and earn income as a writer.

–    The opportunity for networking and connecting with other professionals in the field.

Application requirements:

–    A portfolio of published writings in print and/or online publications is compulsory for art writers and journalists.

–    Final year undergraduates, fresh graduates and curatorial scholars are required to submit sample writings only.

–    All applicants must fit into the categories of “who can apply” and be able to prove this.

–    All applicants must be resident in Africa.

–    All applicants must have a post-secondary school qualification.

–    All applicants must be proficient in both written and spoken English as classes will be taught in English language only.

Applicants must submit ALL of the following documents in a single PDF file:

–    Filled application form. (Download the form here)

–    A CV of the applicant (not more than 2 pages).

–    All applicants must fit into the categories of “who can apply” and be able to prove this.

–    Two samples of published (and unpublished) writings about art or a similar field (i.e. photography, dance, performance, video art, etc.). The sample writing could be an opinion piece, a review, a short essay or a blog post not exceeding 1500 words.

–    A motivation letter explaining why you want to attend the Master Class. 500 words maximum.

Please send all application materials as an attachment in one properly formatted pdf packet to projects@thesoleadventurer.com. by June 30, 2019. Participants will be selected by a panel of independent art professionals who are not members of TSA African Culture Foundation and TSA Art Magazine. 

Participation Fee:

Only selected applicants will be notified and required to pay a participation fee of N35,000. Deadline for payment is August 20, 2019.

Please note, participants will be responsible for their own travel, accommodation and boarding arrangements during the Master Class in Lagos. Assistance in the form of information and advice will be provided to participants from outside Nigeria.

Key Persons

Master Class Program Director – Bukola Oyebode

Bukola Oyebode is an art writer, editor and publisher. She is the founder and managing editor of the visual arts magazine The Sole Adventurer (TSA). As a writer, she has made contributions to online and print magazines. She also contributes to exhibition publications and has covered biennales including Dak’Art (Senegal), Venice Biennale (Italy) and Jogja Biennale XIII (Indonesia). In 2017, she was guest editor of Intense Art Magazine special publication on women artists in Nigeria.

Oyebode is a graduate of English from Lagos State University, Nigeria. She organises social and cultural programs through TSA African Culture Foundation.

Master Class Lead Facilitator – Chika Okeke-Agulu (MFA, Ph.D.)

Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu is an artist, curator, critic and art historian. He is Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, and specializes in classical, modern, and contemporary African and African Diaspora art history and theory. He previously taught at The Pennsylvania State University, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. He began his career in Lagos as an art critic for the newspapers African Concord, Daily Times and Guardian.

He is the author of Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text (Skira Editore, 2016); Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria (Duke, 2015); and (with Okwui Enwezor), Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Damiani, 2010). He is co-editor of Ezumeezu: Essays on Contemporary Art and Architecture, a festschrift in Honour of Demas Nwoko (Goldline & Jacobs, 2012); and Who Knows Tomorrow (König, 2010). His latest curatorial project, the traveling exhibition, El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale (co-organized with Okwui Enwezor) opened at Haus der Kunst, Munich in March.

His writings have appeared in African Arts, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Internationalism, Artforum International, New York Times, Packett, Art Journal, South Atlantic Quarterly and October. He is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and maintains the blog Ọfọdunka.

He is on the Transnational Advisory Board, Hyundai Tate Research Center, Tate Modern, London; Advisory Board, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and on the Selection Committee, Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art. His many awards include Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (2016), and Melville J. Herskovits Prize for the Most Important Scholarly Work in African Studies (2016).

(Text courtesy of princeton.edu)

Key Partners

Hydrocarbon Advisors

Led by respected Lagos art patron Hakeem Adedeji, Hydrocarbon Advisors Limited is an investment banking advisory firm established in 2015 uniquely focused on providing strategic financial guidance.

Angels and Muse

Angels and Muse is a creative hub for nurturing and empowering artistic talent. Founded by influential artist Victor Ehikhamenor, the space offers itself as a support system for expression, productivity and education for the best creative heads and minds in Nigeria and around the world. Already, Angels and Muse boasts of harbouring exceptional creative talent, with the construction of the physical space designed by Tosin Oshinowo, architect and designer of the Maryland Mall in Lagos and the renowned sculptor, Olu Amoda, who made the hub’s state-of-the-art door.

The Guardian Nigeria 

The Guardian (Nigeria), an award-winning and trusted newspaper in Africa. It is an independent newspaper, established in 1983 for the purpose of presenting balanced coverage of events, and of promoting the best interests of Nigeria. It owes allegiance to no political party, ethnic community, religious or other interest groups. Its primary commitment is to the integrity and sovereignty of the Federation of Nigeria, and beyond that to the unity and sovereignty of Africa. Led by Toke Alex Ibru, The Guardian (Nigeria) is one of the few local newspapers still dedicated to reporting the arts in Africa.

The Sole Adventurer (TSA)

The Sole Adventurer is a media and cultural projects initiative operating as TSA Art Media and TSA African Culture Foundation. The media platform publishes about contemporary visual arts from Africa on www.thesoleadventurer.com and in special print publications. Originally focused on Nigeria, the editorial interests now include other African countries, their linked diaspora locations and where the news is exciting and relevant to our growing audience. thesoleadventurer.com reaches art enthusiasts and professionals in different cities in Africa, Europe and the US.

As a cultural foundation, TSA organises projects at the intersection of culture, education and society. Our initiatives include Art Forum Africa and TSA Art Writing Master Class.

TSA has enjoyed the support and partnership of The Netherlands Embassy in Lagos, the French Cultural Network in Nigeria, Ford Foundation, Women and Youth Art Foundation, and most recently the Goethe Institute in Nigeria.

Opening "El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale". March 8, 2019

El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale — Ausstellungsfilm

Statement by the Government of Anambra State, Nigeria on the Death of Okwui Enwezor

OKWUI ENWEZOR (1963-2019): Anambra's Gift to the World of Art

It is with the deepest grief that the Anambra State government received the news of the untimely passing away of our very own world-class curator, poet, educator and critic, Okwui Enwezor. The inimitable Okwui Enwezor, fondly known as simply “Okwui” in elite art circles all over the world, died of cancer in Munich, Germany, on Thursday, March 15. The 55-year old extraordinary scholar and intellectual hailed from Awkuzu in Oyi Local Government Area of Anambra State.

Enwezor's transition was one death that sent volcanic shock waves across the continents. He was one of the foremost contributors to the mainstreaming of African art into the global art. He held large scale exhibitions in America, Asia, Africa and Europe, seizing global imagination. Enwezor may well be the proverbial prophet who was respected everywhere except his homeland because little was known about him in Nigeria, but he is widely recognised for his ability to globalise African art the way Professor Chinua Achebe took African literature to the global arena and Professor Kenneth Onwuka Dike, another great Anambra son, took African history to the global scene. Along with Professor Ben Enwonwu, Enwezor was Anambra's gift to the world of art.   

A quintessential Renaissance man, Enwezor was admitted to study at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, but quickly left for the United States where he took a degree in political science at the Jersey City University. He was to serve as the director of the esteemed Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, until his resignation in 2018, following his battle with cancer. He rose in 1998 to become the first African, and as yet the only non-European Artistic Director, of the prestigious Documenta. Enwezor is reputedly the only curator, after Italy’s legendary Harald Szeeman to have directed both Documenta and the celebrated Venice Biennale.  He was the curator in the Seville and Gwangju Biennials in 2006 and 2008 respectively, climaxing his career as the curator of the Paris Triennale in 2012.

Earlier, in 1994, he collaborated with other artists in founding NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art. He undertook the epochal exhibition In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present, which he curated with Octavio Zaya at the Guggenheim Museum of New York.

Enwezor’s oeuvre is a grand testament to social engagement. He used his art and exhibitions to address colossal social issues, ranging from apartheid to Africa's liberation movements to the significance of President Barrack Obama's leadership of the United States. For him, it was not art for art's sake but art in the service of humanity.

Decorated with honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Cape Town in South Africa and Harvard University, Enwezor was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014 and the Hessichen Kulturpreis in 2015.

Despite his global status, Enwezor was ever conscious of his West African roots. Even a week to his death, Enwezor was working on an exhibition entitled El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale, an extensive traveling exhibition of the work of Africa’s greatest living artist and emeritus professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, El Anatsui, which he co-curated with Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu of Princeton University. The exhibition opened at Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, on March 8.

The Anambra State Government is at once mourning Okwui Enwezor's death and celebrating his rich life. The government will participate actively in his funeral ceremonies, in line with our tradition of honouring men and women who make extraordinary contributions to our state and humanity.

Signed

C. Don Adinuba

Commissioner for Information & Public Enlightenment.  

On Ghana's first Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

This year Ghana will have its first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. I cannot remember the last time I felt very optimistic about a new pavilion by an African nation. The curator (Nana Oforiatta-Ayim) and her team have put together a powerhouse group of artists (Ibrahim Mahama, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, John Akomfra, El Anatsui, Selasi Awusi Sosu and Felicia Abban), who will be presented in a pavilion designed by Sir David Adjaye, one of the most exciting architects practicing anywhere in the world today. There is no question then that Ghana's will be a go-to pavilion and an emphatic statement by that country that it too has contemporary artists that take on the world stage as constituted by the venerable biennale. 

But I am also riven by anxiety. 

There is ample reason for this. First, is my continuing worry about the lack of curatorial rigor and scatter-shot quality of work presented in  African pavilions in Venice. Second, is the seeming lack of long-term vision by the authorities responsible for these initiatives. It is as if what's important to them is to go first to Venice and then think about--if at all--a sustainable infrastructure for their pavilion.  You would think that the proper thing to do is to make sure that there is a plan in place to not just go to Venice but to stay in Venice year after year, like most countries with national pavilions. 

Cameo appearances make no sense; I hate teasers! At the last Venice, there were 8 or so African countries, a few of them attending for the first time (Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Tunisia). This year none of the debutantes of 2017 are there, and even Egypt that has had its own physical pavilion for decades is apparently absent. Of the three in this year's list (Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Madagascar) only Zimbabwe is a returning country--in fact, Zimbabwe is the one country that has made a consistent appearance since its inaugural participation several years ago.

Is this spotty, half-hearted participation because Africa is a poor continent? Or it poverty of the imagination on the part of the people and institutions of art and culture in Africa? The answer might lie in this reality: Zimbabwe with its decades-long economic troubles has managed to maintain a respectable presence in Venice, while the boisterous, giant Nigeria, only managed to kind of show up at the last Biennale for the first time. 

So, this is a public memo to Ghana (and Madagascar): I very sincerely hope that this is not meant to a one-time act, another African cameo show in Venice!