“Nigerian Modernism” Reframes the Story of Modern African Art

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1603417" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/6.-Bruce-Onobrakpeya-The-Last-Supper-1981-%C3%82%C2%A9-reserved.-Tate.jpeg?quality=80&w=970" alt="" width="970" height="611" data-caption='Bruce Onobrakpeya, <em>The Last Supper</em>, 1981. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Photo © Tate (Matt Greenwood)</span>’>

Tate Modern’s “Nigerian Modernism” aims to disrupt the way we think of art history—not only in Africa but globally. Featuring 59 artists working over a period of 50 years, the 300 artworks in the show “open up and complicate what Nigerian identity is,” according to curator Osei Bonsu. He describes the exhibition as “cultural restoration in real time” because Nigerian Modernism was “relegated to a footnote in Modernism.” The show corrects that oversight.

Nigeria was a British colony from 1914 to 1960, and the exhibition extends to either end of that period and into the 1990s. Artists were wrestling with Eurocentric influences throughout, and there’s a kind of wrenching back from Picasso’s appropriation of the African mask as well as a widely reductive view of African art as ethnographic. Ultimately, both Pan-African pride and hyperlocal communities persisted despite colonial rule.

The first room features portraiture, including Aina Onabolu’s depictions of Lagos society figures. His 1955 Portrait of an African Man depicts a Yoruba gentleman in an elegant agbada; across the room, Akinola Lasekan’s 1957 Portrait of Chief J.D. Akeredolu represents the namesake artist wearing the same type of garment. In turn, Akeredolu’s thorn carvings are shown in a vitrine in the center of the room. Fascinating too are the facsimiles reproduced of Akinola Lakesan’s political cartoons, darkly “joking” about regionalism and tribalism. In the next room, Ben Enwonwu’s paintings span dancing girls and solemn men—in a kind of academic realism—which stand in contrast with his seven Igbo-influenced wooden sculptures, bisecting the room.

Nigeria’s newfound independence inspired artistic groups to retool art education with indigenous representation in mind. The Zaria Arts Society, located in the northwest of the country, rebelled against Eurocentric curricula; the journal Black Orpheus was an outgrowth of this thinking, and brightly covered copies are on view, filled with articles and literary criticism reflecting what Bonsu calls “polyphonic networks.” These journals are surrounded by works including: a 1982 screenprint by Emmanuel Okechukwu Odita that translated the drapery of traditional clothing into abstract forms against a deep yellow and green backdrop,  Jimo Akolo’s 1962 Fulani Horsemen featuring three figures astride equine companions in green, pink, red, and blue, and Yusuf Grillo’s moody, ethereal, and magnetic deep indigo oil on board of a female figure. Nearby is Bruce Onobrakpeya’s The Fourteen Stations of The Cross, a linocut triptych from 1969 surrounded by 14 prints depicting Christ from crucifixion to burial within Yoruba architectural motifs. At age 93, Onobrakpeya was in attendance at the press preview and in fine form.

A room dedicated to Eko—the precolonial name of Lagos—showcases a selection of the incredible photographs JD ‘Okhai Ojeikere took in the 1970s: he made about a thousand, all sculptural varieties of women’s hair designs set against a white background. There are also vinyl record sleeves of Nigerian highlife—a musical genre from the 1950s and ‘60s fusing Latin, European and African traditions—mainly featuring the output of Rex Lawson, as well as images of the patterned buildings (Kingsway Stores, offices for a shipping firm) in a tropical modernism style, dreamed up by [non-Nigerian] architects James Cubitt and T.P. Bennett.

In an exploration of the Oshogbo School, Bonsu notes the “marginalization of those without arts education,” which these artists did not have. Viewers are introduced to the colorful embroideries of Nike Davies-Okundaye, Jimoh Buraimoh’s beautiful beadwork pieces alluding to Yoruba ceremonial cloaks and Twins Seven Seven’s intricate ink drawings of fantastical spirits and ghosts drawn from Yoruba mythologies.

The exhibition also focuses on ‘uli,’ a painting tradition from southeastern Nigeria, based on natural forms that have been historically passed down between women during this period. Uche Okeke’s 1961 Ana Mmuo [Land of the Dead] employs vivid colors, including yellow, orange and red, to summon Igbo spirits and is thought to be prescient in relation to the losses from the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, six years in the future. Obiora Udechukwu’s 1970s-era line drawings in ink are minimalist, including one example featuring a woman’s face with pursed lips, a nose ring, and a squinting gaze, but his four-panel work from 1993, Our Journey in ink and acrylic, is much more epic and vibrant, unfurling with a long yellow swirl. This work is placed alongside wooden sculptures decorated with Indigenous graphics by Ghana-born El Anatsui, who taught at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka as of 1975.

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1603419" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/8.-Uzo-Egonu-Stateless-People-an-artist-with-beret-1981.-c-The-estate-of-Uzo-Egonu.-Private-Collection.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="" width="970" height="1197" data-caption='Uzo Egonu, <em>Stateless People an artist with beret</em>, 1981. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Nic Hutchings, The estate of Uzo Egonu. Private Collection</span>’>

The exhibition concludes with a room dedicated exclusively to Uzo Egonu, a boldly graphic painter who lived in Britain from the 1940s until his death. He melded European Modernism with Igbo sculpture in a figurative/abstract hybrid. In addition to calm scenes of a woman reading or two friends in the middle of hair plaiting, Egonu’s “Stateless People” paintings (of a musician, an artist, a writer) have been reunited here for the first time in 40 years.

In the novel Every Day is for the Thief, Nigerian-American author Teju Cole writes about the protagonist’s delight in finding a music and bookshop while visiting Nigeria. As he scans its offerings, he thinks, “And there is really only one word for what I feel about these new contributions to the Lagosian scene: gratitude. They are emerging, these creatives, in spite of everything; and they are essential because they are the signs of hope in a place that, like all other places on the limited earth, needs hope.” The same could be said about this exhibition.