Aindrea Emelife to Curate Nigeria’s 2024 Venice Biennale Pavilion

Taking charge of Nigeria’s second-ever national pavilion, Emelife will curate a compelling group show featuring eight prominent artists, among them Tunji Adeniyi-Jones and Yinka Shonibare

Nigeria is making a captivating cultural statement at the prestigious 60th Venice Biennale in the coming year. Titled “Nigeria Imaginary,” the exhibition will showcase the remarkable works of eight talented artists in a compelling group show who are Yinka Shonibare, Precious Okoyomon, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Ndidi Dike, Onyeka Igwe, Abraham Oghobase and Fatimah Tuggar.

His Excellency Godwin Obaseki, the Governor of Edo State, serves as the commissioner of the Pavilion. He has formally entrusted the organization of the Pavilion to the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Benin City, Edo State, to be carried out on behalf of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and its Ministry of Culture and Information.

Aindrea Emelife, the Nigerian-British curator and art historian, who currently holds the position of curator of contemporary and modern art at the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Edo State, will take on the role of curator for the pavilion.”

Aindrea Emelife said, “Nigeria Imaginary looks at the many Nigerians that live in our minds: the Nigeria that could be and is yet to be. The exhibition will explore different perspectives and constructed ideas, memories of and nostalgia for Nigeria, with a scope that is cross-generational and inter-geographic. The artists were selected for their unique visions of Nigeria, with a mixture of artists brought up in Nigeria and within the Diaspora curated to capture a sense of optimism imbued in inherited and collective cultural history. Articulated through many fields of reference and artistic disciplines, Nigeria Imaginary is a restless investigation of the present and a defiant imagining of what is yet to come.”

Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki, said This exhibition, envisioned by Ms.Emelife with a diverse roster of accomplished artists, encourages us to revisit the past in order to create a bright future for Nigeria,’