A Panel Discussion Between Achille Tenkiang, Seun Alli, Tushar Hathiramani, and Wale Lawal
On April 24th, G.A.S. Lagos hosted Seeding Futures - Cultural Infrastructure Beyond the Institution in collaboration with Achille Tenkiang, founder and director of the Baldwin Institute. The convening, which explored the infrastructures of Black art and cultural memory, was held as an associate event of the AAL Lab and Affiliates Network, of which the Baldwin Institute is a member.
The session opened with remarks from Achille, who reflected on the motivations behind the gathering through his encounters with Koyo Kouoh, the first African curator appointed to lead the Venice Biennale. Recounting conversations around supporting RAW Material Company, an experimental centre for art, knowledge, and society founded by Koyo in Dakar, through his work as a grantmaker, he shared a note she once sent him: “I somewhat gathered that your name sounds like home.” Returning to the phrase throughout his address, Achille reflected on how building institutions, archives, and spaces for dialogue is also an act of creating the conditions for home and, where those conditions do not yet exist, imagining them into being.
He also spoke candidly about the experience of loss and continuity, recalling that he and Koyo had still been corresponding in the week before her passing. Reflecting on the unfinished conversations and plans they had shared, he posed a central question that framed the evening: not simply what cultural workers build, but what it means to create structures capable of continuing beyond the lives of their founders.
As moderator of the evening, Achille invited the panellists, Seun Alli, a curator and cultural strategist; Tushar Hathiramani, founder of boutique hotel 16/16 and a creative entrepreneur working across hospitality and culture; and Wale Lawal, founder and editor-in-chief of The Republic, to reflect on their practices not as isolated creative acts, but as part of a wider infrastructural field within the African cultural ecosystem. The discussion explored where infrastructure exists beyond institutions, what is gained or lost within institutional frameworks, and how systems, relationships, and acts of care can themselves function as forms of cultural infrastructure. It also considered questions of centralisation and decentralisation in Nigeria, and whether building outside dominant structures is a strategy or a necessity.
The evening concluded with an interactive Q&A session, where audience members reflected further on issues of cultural appropriation, access, and who gets to shape infrastructure for particular communities.
Event Details
Date: 24th April, 2026
Time: 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Location: 9b, Hakeem Dickson Drive, off T.F. Kuboye Road, Oniru, Lagos
About the Speakers
Achille Tenkiang
Achille Tenkiang is a writer, strategist, and producer whose practice is guided by the belief that storytelling is a form of place-making. Born in Cameroon and now based in Brooklyn, his work moves across disciplines and diasporas, exploring how sound, memory, archives, and cultural exchange shape Black life across geographies. Drawing from experiences living between cities including Douala, Dublin, Paris, Cape Town, Nairobi, and Brooklyn, his practice spans writing, philanthropy, criticism, curation, and cultural production.
He is the founder and director of the Baldwin Institute, a nonprofit rooted in the legacy of James Baldwin and dedicated to supporting creative futures for Black and Brown artists, thinkers, and organisers. Previously, he worked as a grantmaker at the Mellon Foundation, managing more than $58 million in grants across art, cultural heritage, public memory, and the Black Atlantic. His writing has appeared in publications including Vogue, Rolling Stone, and the BBC. He has also presented work at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the U.S. Embassy in France, and serves on the boards of the Delaware Art Museum, JACK Arts, and Mondiant Initiative.
Seun Alli
Seun is a Lagos-based lawyer, curator, and cultural strategist, and the founder of June Creative Art Advisory. She has spent nearly a decade building the infrastructure that allows artists and collectors to find each other — most recently as the lead curator of the landmark Fela Kuti: Afrobeat Rebellion exhibition.
Tushar Hathiramani
Tushar is the founder of 16/16 — a boutique hotel and creative incubator in Lagos that is, itself, a piece of cultural infrastructure. Trained in New York, raised between Nigeria and India, he brings a rare fluency in how creative ecosystems actually function in cities.
Wale Lawal
Wale is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Republic, the digital media platform that in 2022 became the first Nigerian magazine to win the Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge. His work is a sustained argument that narrative — who tells it, and how it circulates — is infrastructure.
