On 2nd January Dr Mahret Ifeoma Kupka landed in Lagos under a harmattan sky ready to embark on her long-anticipated two-month residency at G.A.S. Lagos. She is the final Germany-based curator to join us as part of the TURN2 Programme. The initiative, developed by the German Federal Cultural Fund, was conceived to facilitate artistic co-creation between Germany and African countries. Here she shares insights into her practice and hopes for the next eight weeks.

As we launch our 2023 programme, we wanted to take the opportunity to thank the incredible residents whose commitment and enthusiastic participation lie at the heart of everything we've been able to achieve in our inaugural year. ⁠Their drive, energy, ambition, and ideas continue to inspire us and have been invaluable in helping us shape Guest Artists Space. ⁠

Queering the Subversive Dye: Thoughts on Textile and Gender was the second event in a two-part series hosted by Miriam Bettin to mark the end of her residency at G.A.S. The event revolved around a conversation with Matthew Blaise, Dolapo Osunsina, Adebayo Quadry-Adekanbi, Zee and Adeju Thompson that was focused on textiles and gender whilst touching on questions of spiritual practices, pre-colonial queer politics, gender identities and performance, as well as degendering fashion.

We managed to generate some incredible coverage of our International Launch with more exciting stories still to be published. Here is a taster of some of our favourite articles as we close off the year and look forward to more exciting projects in 2023.

The Access ART X Prize awards early-career artists from Africa and its Diaspora with opportunities to develop their practices, with the intention of setting them up for the highest levels of success on the global stage. The Prize, formerly open only to emerging Nigerian artists, has evolved to include an additional award that is open to emerging artists from all of Africa and its Diaspora, in a bid to buttress sustainable careers for a wider range of artists.

To conclude her residency at G.A.S. curator Miriam Bettin hosted the first exhibition at the G.A.S. Farm House in Ikise, designed by Papa Omotayo. The show brought together artists and designers whose work with textiles emphasises the fluid, transformative, anti-colonial, emancipatory, and queer-feminist qualities of the medium. The artists shared a dedication to tradition and at times nostalgia that is being reimagined in the context of contemporary discourses and aesthetics.

Artefacts (Re)connecting … Can you sense them? is an exhibition coordinated by Sarafadeen Bello to conclude his residency at G.A.S. Lagos. The mixed media Installation is a visual summary of the experiences and work created by Bello during this period. It questions the state of our archives, the assumed neutrality of the digital, as well as the impacts of 'digital restitution' on the ongoing process of restitution as a whole. Through the work, he interrogates notions around who these digital replicas belong to, who they are relevant for, and what it means more broadly in terms of access.

Guest Artists Space Foundation is recruiting a full-time Communications Assistant. The purpose of the role is to provide key communications and administrative support to Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, Lagos. The successful candidate will be responsible for managing the production of digital content and delivering our digital and social media strategy under the direction of the Residency and Projects Coordinator and the Y.S.F. Communications and Projects Manager in London.

Apocalypse Pantry, is a collaborative project between Mariam Hava Aslam, Tushar Hathiramani and hFACTOR. It is a speculation where perishable crops are made into chutneys and pickles as one way of addressing the precarity of food insecurity. Displayed on an adapted Mai Ruwa cart, it suggests an urban network of food growing and distribution in Lagos.