“I wanted to create a moment for Lagos on the global art calendar,” says Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, the founder of Art X, sitting in a chic private booth within the fair. “A moment that brought the rest of Africa together here and enabled us on home soil to encounter those around the world and ourselves.”
From the hot blaze of a November day in Nigeria’s most populous city, thousands of people pour into the cool shade of Art X, the eighth edition of the largest art fair in West Africa: Visitors from around the world and the local art scene, a runway of celebrities and the effortlessly glamorous Lagos middle-class, all make their way through a maze-like sprawl of paintings, prints, sculptures and moving image installations.
This is one of the most prominent events in Lagos’ “art month,” as it’s unofficially and widely known – a packed calendar of exhibitions, art, photography and cultural events between the end of October and the end of November, mainly dotted around the affluent parts of the city. Its prominence is at the heart of Lagos’ gradual re-emergence as an international center for art from Nigeria and the continent, a status that waned in the decades of military rule and economic turmoil after the iconic pan-African cultural festival, Festac, in 1977.
Peterside-Schwebig launched Art X in 2016, wading against the tide as Nigeria’s economy slid into a recession. “And honestly, it took off like a rocket,” Peterside-Schwebig said.
Amid a prolonged period of economic decline in Nigeria, rising insecurity and growing disillusionment with the political class, the emergence of the art industry has been a success story. Solo exhibitions by Nigerian and African artists are now a more regular fixture in Western galleries.
Art X, held this year at an event center in Lagos’ Victoria Island district, right on the edge of the Atlantic, is one snapshot of how Nigeria’s art industry, largely led by women, has flourished in adverse conditions. But staging this has not…
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