As we eagerly anticipate the start of Lagos Art Week at the end of October, we are thrilled to announce the arrival of Theophilus Imani, who will join us at G.A.S. Lagos until November 8, 2024. Theo’s residency sits within the framework of the Annotations Programme. A visual researcher based in Verona, Italy, Theo’s practice primarily focuses on the representation of the Black body within diasporic visual culture, particularly in the Italian context. 

G.A.S. Foundation is excited to introduce our second resident to join us this art season, Liz Kobusinge, a Ugandan researcher and multidisciplinary artist embarking on an immersive four-week residency in Lagos as part of the Annotations Programme - a six-month project that explores major African cultural festivals and their dual nature as historic events and repositories of postcolonial pan-African encounters.

This autumn, the G.A.S. Foundation celebrates four alumni making strides in exhibitions and project debuts that highlight the influence of their residencies in Lagos. Tobi Onabolu's evocative video collage Ojú-Inu premieres in London, blending live action and soundscape to explore media's impact on consciousness. Karl Ohiri and Riikka Kassinen’s Abi Morocco Photos: Spirit of Lagos opens at Autograph London, showcasing the legacy of a renowned Lagos studio. Miriam Bettin’s Grow It, Show It! at Museum Folkwang interrogates hair as a symbol of identity and resistance, while Rafael Kouto's Circular Heroes project on upcycling debuts at Photo Vogue Festival 2025 in Milan. Each project reflects deep engagement with Nigerian culture, history, and aesthetics.

G.A.S. Foundation’s 2024-25 residency season launched with a dynamic cohort of multidisciplinary practitioners. ⁠Ana Ogunsanya explored her Nigerian-British heritage through Indigenous textile practices, while Phokeng Setai reimagined scaffolding as a site for public art in Lagos. ⁠Meanwhile, Alexandra Martens Serrano engaged with the intersection of quantum technologies and natural ecologies. Misheck Masamvu spent time at the G.A.S. Farm House developing new works that were informed by the Nigerian cultural landscape. ⁠The season continues with ART X Prize winner Shabu Mwangi, who is deepening his exploration of identity and power dynamics ahead of his presentation at the 9th edition of the fair.⁠
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Guest Artists Space Foundation is excited to welcome Kenyan multidisciplinary artist Shabu Mwangi for a residency from September to November 2024. Mwangi’s dynamic practice spans painting, sculpture, and installation, often focusing on the effects of structural and historical violence, as well as marginalization, on both individual and collective psyches. His work offers a powerful commentary on the societal and cultural tensions that shape contemporary life.

Join us at G.A.S. Lagos on September 27, 2024, for After the Future, an immersive evening with artist Alexandra Martens Serrano. The event will kick off with an artist talk, where Serrano will share her innovative approach to art, science, and social change. Following this, guests will participate in a speculative futures session, culminating in a collaborative drawing exercise, Exquisite Corpse, which will encourage dialogue around the evolving relationship between art and technology.

Goethe-Institut is partnering with G.A.S. Foundation to facilitate one Lagos-based residency within the framework of its Studio Quantum programme.  This innovative global constellation of residencies and supporting public interventions will explore emerging quantum technologies through the prism of art in Lagos, Dublin, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Karlsruhe, Rotterdam, Bangalore and London.

Join us for In Pieces, a collage workshop that invites you to explore culture through the powerful lens of your personal experiences. This interactive session will begin with a presentation that will uncover collage as a language of autoethnographic expression, an approach that combines the personal with the cultural to tell stories rooted in individual lived experiences.

Following the presentation, participants will engage in an introspective mind-mapping activity designed to uncover the themes and stories most significant to themselves. This reflective exercise will serve as the foundation for a hands-on collaging workshop, where there will be an opportunity to create your own piece of autoethnographic art.

In transit under another sky is an ambitious exhibition realised across Kampala and Nairobi by curators E.N. Mirembe and Rosie Olang’ Odhiambo. The project brings together the work of 11 artists who engage deeply with themes of transience, marginal identities, and the idea of artistic practice navigating between physical spaces and geographies.

In August, we were pleased to welcome Misheck Masamvu as our second Goodman Gallery-funded resident at G.A.S. Foundation. Known for a distinct practice that spans painting, drawing, and sculpture, Misheck’s residency in Nigeria presents an exciting opportunity for him to engage with and respond directly to the local context through the development of a new body of work.

Misheck, who will spend the majority of his residency at the G.A.S. Farm House in Ijebu, hopes that his immersion in an environment that intersects agricultural life with an artistic setting will provide a fresh perspective and inspire new approaches to his creative process.

Whether starting one’s art career or entering a more established stage, artist residencies can offer valuable resources and professional connections in a mostly opaque art world, not to mention time to focus on making work. Insiders shared the best 35 residencies globally and told us why they're worth it.

This week we’re welcoming multidisciplinary sculptor, filmmaker, and researcher Alexandra Martens Serrano to G.A.S. Lagos. Alexandra was awarded the residency after being selected for the Goethe-Institut supported Studio Quantum programme. This innovative global constellation of residencies and supporting public interventions located across Dublin, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Karlsruhe, Rotterdam, Bangalore and London, will explore emerging quantum technologies through the prism of art.