Textile Artist And Teacher Gasali Adeyemo Features on 'Messengers
Textile artist and teacher Gasali Adeyemo talks about preserving Nigeria’s traditional textiles -like batik, adire, itinochi, and akwocha -his humble childhood, his biggest influences, and the next generation.
Africa-Related New York
Textile Artist Gasali Adeyemo dicusses the Yoruba art of Adire (tye-dye) making.
From modest beginnings to becoming a leading voice in textile preservation, Gasali Adeyemo shares a journey rooted in craft, culture, and continuity.
In this episode of Messengers with Oyiza, Gasali explores the rich history and cultural significance of traditional Nigerian textiles from Adire and Batik to Itinochi and Akwocha and the urgent need to preserve these indigenous techniques for future generations.
He shares his experience styling Viola Davis in the film "The Woman King". He also reflects on his early influences like Nike Art Gallery (@nikeartgallery), the discipline behind mastering textile artistry, and the responsibility of passing down knowledge in a rapidly changing world.
This is a conversation about heritage, identity, and the role of artists as custodians of culture.
Follow Gasali @yoruba_indigo. Watch now on Spotify.
‘MESSENGERS with Oyiza’ is an engaging interview TV/podcast series hosted by Nigerian journalist and producer Oyiza Adaba. Produced by Africa-Related and recorded remotely from New York and on location, the show blends relaxed conversations with interviews of selected guests who discuss topics about Africa for a global audience. The conversations aim to bridge divides, correct misconceptions, and spark positive discussion about Africa and its people. Each 30-minute episode features inspiring stories, creative graphics, video clips, and background reports. The series focuses on Africa's People, Places and Issues.
For more stories told from an African perspective, follow us at africarelatedinc
#AfricaRelated #AfricanArt #art #podcast #conversation #artist #messengerswithoyiza #Messengers #AfricaRelated #TextileArt #adire #batik #CulturalHeritage #TheWomanKing #oyizaadaba
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DELA Screens at Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art Lagos
On March 8, 2026, Lagos hosted a screening of DELA: The Making of El Anatsui, a biographical documentary exploring the creative journey of one of Africa’s most celebrated artists. Directed by Oyiza Adaba and produced by Africa-Related over a ten-year period, the screening was held in collaboration with the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art as part of Lagos Gallery Week 2026.
Africa-Related, Lagos
From bottle caps to monumental global artworks, the story behind the art is just as powerful as the work itself.
On March 8, 2026, Lagos hosted a screening of DELA: The Making of El Anatsui, a biographical documentary exploring the creative journey of one of Africa’s most celebrated artists. Directed by Oyiza Adaba and produced by Africa-Related over a ten-year period, the screening was held in collaboration with the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art as part of Lagos Gallery Week 2026.
The event took place at the museum’s premises within Pan-Atlantic University, drawing an audience of students, staff, and art enthusiasts.
Attendees were also invited to explore the history behind the work of El Anatsui. His early wood carvings, including the famous wooden trays that earned him the nickname "TV Man," are on permanent display at the YSMA in Lagos.
Share this with anyone who appreciates art, film, and African creative history.
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Private Screening of DELA: The Making of El Anatsui for the Tom Adaba Grandchildren.
Abuja, Nigeria July 28, 2025. Private Screening of DELA: The Making of El Anatsui for the Tom Adaba Grandchildren. It was a great session full of intriguing and well thought-out questions from the young inquiring minds. Thank you for attending. Learn more elanatsuifilm.com. Follow @elanatsuifilm
Abuja, Nigeria July 28, 2025. Private Screening of DELA: The Making of El Anatsui for the Tom Adaba Grandchildren. It was a great session full of intriguing and well thought-out questions from the young inquiring minds. Thank you for attending. Learn more elanatsuifilm.com. Follow @elanatsuifilm
6th Chinua Achebe International Conference and Exhibition!
As Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, I am delighted to welcome scholars, artists, students, and guests from around the world to our newly upgraded home—a space now brimming with art, ideas, and the enduring legacy of Chinua Achebe.
Welcome to the 6th Chinua Achebe International Conference and Exhibition!
As Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, I am delighted to welcome scholars, artists, students, and guests from around the world to our newly upgraded home—a space now brimming with art, ideas, and the enduring legacy of Chinua Achebe.
This year’s theme, Africa’s Democratisation Journey: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, comes at a time when Africa’s democratic experiment faces profound challenges. Together, through conversations and a vibrant art exhibition, we honour Achebe’s legacy of critical thought and creative resistance.
Join us at the opening ceremony on Wednesday, 23rd July 2024.
Venue: Seminar Room 1, Institute of African Studies [New site, off UBA Gate on Greenhouse Road], University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Google Meet joining info: meet.google.com/nfn-viyg-nyh
Join by phone (US) +1 210-951-8557 PIN: 874 061 744#
Time: 10:00 am WAT
Keynote speakers: Rufai Oseni [ Arise TV, Lagos, Nigeria; Title: "African Democratic Journey: Pitfalls and Possibilities"] & Professor Ifeanyi C. Ezeonu [ Department of Sociology, Brock University, Canada; Title: "The Nigerian Economic Cul de Sac: Critical Reflections on Liberal Democracy and Its Challenges for the Next Generation"]
Special thanks to our Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Oguejiofo Ujam, for his unwavering support; my co-convener, Prof. Raphael Njoku [Department of History, Idaho State University, Pocatello, USA.]; the Local Organising Committee led by Prof. Chima Korieh; our dedicated volunteers; and the staff and students of the Institute who made this vision a reality.
Please join us. Let’s make this gathering a spark for new ideas and a beacon of hope for Africa’s democratic future.
Professor Ozioma Onuzulike
Director, IAS-UNN
IG: @ozioma.onuzulike
#AchebeConference2025 #UNN #InstituteOfAfricanStudies #AfricaDemocracy #ChinuaAchebe #Nsukka
Echoes of the Landfill: Turning Ghana’s Plastic Waste into Art
Echoes of the Landfill is not another art exhibition. It is a radical reclamation where plastic waste is reimagined as both medium and living testimony to our callous disregard for the environment.
ECHOES OF THE LANDFILL
Art from the Margins of Environment and Economy
Curatorial Statement by Beatrice Bee Arthur
Echoes of the Landfill is not another art exhibition. It is a radical reclamation where plastic waste is reimagined as both medium and living testimony to our callous disregard for the environment. A collaborative effort by the Museum of Science and Technology (MST) and ArtfullyYours, Bee Arthur Creative Productions for World Environment Day 2025, this exhibition convenes six Ghanaian eco-conscious artists—Obed Addo, Beatrice Bee Arthur, Essilfie Banton, Andrea Ghia, and Salim—who excavate the hidden politics within discarded plastic: narratives of colonial residues, neoliberal excess, and quiet acts of African resilience.
Landfills are the unmarked graves of globalisation. Here, Accra’s streets and shorelines become archives of abandonment—water sachets like shed skin, flip-flops as fossilised footprints, toy limbs tangled with fishing nets. These are not inert objects but silent accusers, materialising the violence of an economy that treats both people and land as disposable.
The artists in this exhibition do not recycle—they resurrect trash. Through sculpture, installation, painting, poetry, and photography, they force plastic to confess: as a relic of extractivism, a marker of climate injustice, and paradoxically, a medium for African futurity. Indigenous philosophies of circularity collide with the toxic immortality of synthetic materials, asking: What does it mean to "dispose" when there is no "away?"
Without institutional funding, this project embodies its own thesis: resourcefulness as resistance. The artists’ grassroots mobilisation mirrors the informal economies that already transform waste into worth across Africa. Echoes of the Landfill is thus both mirror and megaphone—refusing the neoliberal spectacle of sustainability to center community-led epistemologies.
This is NOT an exhibition about waste. It is an intervention in time. A demand to rewrite the lexicon of value: that a bag is not "single-use" but a generational artifact; that those who scavenge are archivists of the Anthropocene.
ARTISTS
Obed Addo
"My work is about dignity—finding it in discarded things, and in ourselves."
Beatrice Bee Arthur
"This exhibition is the toxic truth where plastics and capitalists lie."
Salim
"When I sculpt from trash, I think of ancestors. Would they forgive us?"
Andrea Ghia
"In painting about plastic pollution, I am confronting the ability of permanence to outlive memory."
Essilfie Banton
"Each artwork I make is a conversation with discarded materials. I want the viewer to see the soul of what we discard."
Nii Noi Candos
---“We are not just picking up plastic—we are picking up the pieces of a broken system. Every salvaged fragment is a challenge to the world that discarded it.”
Data Point: Ghana generates 1.1 million tons of plastic waste annually—less than 2% is recycled.
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Prince Alban Gogo Anyanwu: Renowned Sculptor, Educator and Administrator (1934 - 2023)
Prince Gogo studied Fine Arts at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (1961-1962) and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (1962-1965) becoming one of the two pioneer graduates of sculpture at the University of Nigeria.
Prince Alban Gogo Anyanwu (1934 - 2023) Renowned Sculptor, Educator and Administrator
Prince Gogo studied Fine Arts at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (1961-1962) and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (1962-1965) becoming one of the two pioneer graduates of sculpture at the University of Nigeria. He was a seasoned, mature, experienced professional artist and teacher especially in Creative Arts. He was deliberate in all his endeavours, manifesting unusual talent and skills.
As a fulfilled educator with deep knowledge in all subjects, Prince Gogo taught in primary, secondary, teacher-training, and tertiary institutions as Headmaster, Principal of Colleges, Lecturer (the pioneer sculpture lecturer in the Institute of Management and Technology, IMT – Enugu, 1972-1976) before joining the Imo State Government after its creation in 1976. He was a Chief Inspector of Education for Creative Arts, Director of State Archives, and the pioneer Director of the Council for Arts and Culture, a role that created the opportunity for him to direct creative arts and culture in the old Imo State.
In his late 70s, driven by passion for quality education, Prince Gogo started a series of penetrating orientation lectures titled – ‘Revolution in Education through the Creative Arts’. The lectures were delivered to secondary schools in Imo State, Nigeria. Those lectures were documented in 3 Creative Art books which he authored and published. The books were presented to the public in 2014 during his 80th birthday celebration.
In 1981, Prince Gogo opened a big Art Studio and Gallery – known as ‘Prefab Galleries’ at Owerri, Imo State where he produced so many art works – drawings, sculptures and paintings. Since his graduation, he has executed over 200 gigantic sculpture pieces and paintings and has participated in solo and group Art Exhibitions.
Inappropriately, Prince Gogo’s Art Studio and Gallery was demolished in a most barbaric manner in May 2010 – he lost many of his artworks (sculpture pieces and paintings) and that of his son, a graduate painter. Though in 2020, a Court Judgment was delivered in favour of Prince Gogo against the Imo State Housing Corporation (for trespassing) by a competent court of jurisdiction, the belated justice (after 10 years) cannot substitute the destroyed artworks of a renowned professional artist.
On April 2, 2023, Prince Gogo’s journey on earth ended and he returned to his Creator. To celebrate this exceptional STAR and mark one year of his passing, we immortalised him by erecting a life-size bronze bust of him mounted in front of his house in Owerri where Prefab Galleries is located. The bronze statue was produced by Dr Chile Oparaocha, a professor of sculpture at the Department of Fine Arts and Design, University of Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria (attached are some of the photos of the bust).
To further immortalise this Art Legend after two years of his passing, we have launched a website in his honour – www.prefabgalleries.com, where we invite everyone to watch a 2009 interview by Africa-Related https://youtu.be/tXquu6670AU aired repeatedly in a couple of Multichoice channels and photo speak https://photos.app.goo.gl/tRTFL5h6RSnTYLcx9 showcasing his art life spanning four scores and nine.
Ominira
The title Ominira —meaning "Independence" in the Yoruba language—evokes a profound message in Bruce Onobrakpeya’s artwork. This powerful piece reflects the belief that Nigeria possesses the human resources, moral fortitude, and abundant natural wealth to thrive as a modern and prosperous nation.
Ominira
Medium: Plastograph
Dimensions: 45cm x 60cm
Artist: Bruce Onobrakpeya
The title Ominira —meaning "Independence" in the Yoruba language—evokes a profound message in Bruce Onobrakpeya’s artwork. This powerful piece reflects the belief that Nigeria possesses the human resources, moral fortitude, and abundant natural wealth to thrive as a modern and prosperous nation.
As we reflect on this artwork , we join Papa Bruce Onobrakpeya—a witness to Nigeria’s transformative journey since gaining independence in 1960—in prayer.
May the Divine bless Nigeria with enduring unity, wisdom, and peace. As we celebrate our nation’s independence, we ask for strength to uphold justice, fairness, and equity for all citizens.
On this special day of commemoration , let us remember that even in times of struggle and uncertainty, we are not without guidance. The courage of our ancestors, the rich heritage of our land, and the unyielding spirit of our people inspire us to move forward. Through the challenges we endure, we carry the hope and promise of a brighter future—one founded on resilience, unity, and collective progress.
Let this Independence Day remind us that , just as our nation's founders envisioned a prosperous Nigeria, we too must continue this journey to realize that dream for future generations. As we walk this path, let us remain steadfast in our commitment to the values of peace, love, and harmony that unite us as one nation under God.
Bruce Onobrakpeya, a UNESCO Living Human Treasure , celebrated his 92nd birthday this past August. For over five decades, he has resided in Mushin, Papa-Ajao, Lagos , continuing to be a beacon of Nigeria’s artistic and cultural legacy.