Art is often described as a space of openness and experimentation. In practice, it rarely exists without expectations. Certain themes and styles have become familiar and easier to recognise as serious work. Over time, these expectations begin to shape how new or unusual work is received.
During a recent conversation on the Kurating Podcast, artist Seidougha Linus Eyimiegha, better known as Mr Danfo, mentioned that early in his career someone described his work as “too contemporary.” His work revolves around Lagos’ yellow Danfo buses. His paintings draw from this visual language: geometric patterns, hand-painted lettering, bold colour combinations. The compositions are stripped-down and graphic, closer to design than to traditional painting, particularly in their minimalist quality.
Historically, the term “contemporary art” refers to art produced since the 1970s, although that varies. What matters more than a specific date is an artwork’s context, whether it is in active conversation with ideas, materials, and social conditions of its moment. To illustrate, photographer Lakin Ogunbanwo approaches portraiture through fashion and obscuring his subjects’ faces, redirecting attention to gesture and clothing as he explores identity. Rubianna Michael uses caramelised honey, turmeric extract and resin to make sculptures about change and the beauty of being in-between. Even street-based visual languages, such as the graphic markings that run through Mr Danfo’s paintings, belong to the same contemporary moment despite appearing quite different.
This raises the question: If ‘Contemporary Nigerian Art’ encompasses all of this simultaneously, isn’t the category almost too broad to be useful? Yet it is this category that’s applied to shape the art scene.
When you ask an artist to define their work, they rarely answer in terms of categorisation. It is typically about communicating a message, investigating the self, documenting an aspect of society, and processing an experience. Wana Udobang, a Lagos-based curator and artist, whose work cuts across performance and archival documentation, describes her curatorial process as the creation of an entirely new language. “I don’t think of what’s contemporary or not,” she said.
In other words, the field is wide and contemporary artists have learnt to define their art separately from this categorization, which makes “too contemporary” an interesting thing to say about art made by a living artist, for today’s audience. It is saying that there is a correct definition of contemporary, and suggesting that Mr Danfo’s work, whatever else it was doing, was not ticking the right boxes.
Who’s Buying, Who’s Showing
For all its talk of openness, the field of contemporary art is defined by selective decisions. Someone somewhere decides what is being platformed, influenced by various stakeholders. Nowhere is this more visible than in commercial markets. In the past few decades, the international art community has shown increased interest in Nigerian art, indirectly defining the appetites of galleries and collectors. For example, figurative painting and portraiture that explore identity or urban life have received strong attention from buyers in London, New York, and Paris.
Udobang emphasised that this dynamic exists within a wider pattern outside the visual arts scene. “Once there’s money in the system, everybody wants to find the blueprint,” she told me. “People are replicating the same kind of work.” In this context, some artists begin to lose focus on their own creative trajectory, adjusting their work to match what sells rather than engaging with their long-term artistic goals.
Additionally, there is a practical gap between the intention of an artist or curator and the infrastructure provided by institutions. What a curator wants to accomplish and what a gallery can house are not always aligned, but can often be negotiated. Galleries operate within the expectations of their collectors, and part of the curatorial task is to find ways to honour an artist’s vision while still working within those limits, except in cases where foundational priorities are different. For instance, Udobang’s multimedia (travelling) installation Dirty Laundry in 2022 was designed as an experience and therefore could not be housed in a commercial gallery. “Galleries need to sell, so I had to do that in a space I paid for myself,” she explained.
All said, this is not a closed system. Nigeria’s contemporary art ecosystem has expanded significantly over the past decade, creating more entry points for artists and curators working beyond a single commercial model. Platforms such as Art X Lagos, the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos, and galleries such as Rele Gallery, Kó Gallery, Adegbola Gallery, and Dada Gallery have each contributed to widening the exhibition artscape. Most recently, the 2026 +234 Art Fair centred on inclusivity, as a deliberate move to platform artists outside traditional networks and foreground experimental approaches to making. These spaces signal that the ecosystem is growing. As these platforms choose to work outside the dominant template, they in turn expand the definition of contemporary Nigerian art.
Working Outside The Lines
Simon O’Sullivan, a Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Goldsmiths College, University of London, writes about art as a way of producing alternative narratives and untimely images that speak back to their moment. His theory of ‘Untimely Art’ is particularly enlightening for contemporary work, which may look strange or out of place because the frameworks used to interpret it have not yet caught up. The artist may draw on references or methods that fall outside the field’s dominant language. But that otherworldliness is exactly why it’s needed. Over time, work that once seemed like a diversion would begin to function as inspiration and as a new way of imagining what is possible, like depositing a gift into the world and trusting people to act on its influence. No one can guarantee when that sedimentation takes place. Not even the artists themselves. But then it happens, and all of a sudden their work feels born for that exact moment.
An example close to home is The Zaria Art Society, a group of students at what is now Ahmadu Bello University that included Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko, Yusuf Grillo and Bruce Onobrakpeya. These artists rejected the Western curriculum of art education in 1958 and insisted on merging indigenous Igbo design with abstraction and surrealism. It was considered a radical departure at the time. But sure enough, the ideology was planted and artists who came after built directly on that language. Ladi Kwali did something similar in ceramics, bringing traditional Gwari techniques into a modern pottery training context on an unprecedented scale. Years later, her work remains a reference point for ceramic artists across the continent.
The concept of untimely art extends beyond visual arts. It simply describes any work of art that arrives before the world is ready and continues to find new meaning over time. George Orwell wrote 1984 in 1949, and it remains the first reference point for anyone trying to make sense of authoritarianism. We see it in music too. In the 1970s, the Lijadu Sisters were making music that nobody quite had a category for, blending psychedelic rock, apala, reggae, soul, and Afrobeat in a scene dominated by male artists such as their cousin, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. In 2024, Amaarae described them as the first Alté girls, claiming they helped build an ethos of how she wanted to operate as an African artist. Echoing this, Ayra Starr specifically sought women from that era who did significant work that was not discussed and found the sisters. Taiwo Lijadu, for her part, was never in doubt. Speaking at the 2024 reissue of their 1979 album Horizon Unlimited, she said the lyrics were “not only of today but also very futuristic.”
If one thing holds, it is that contemporary art remains a space for experimentation – at least in principle. Artists should follow the demands of the work itself, regardless of where it leads. In practice, that freedom is shaped by the same systems of visibility and value that determine what circulates. But experimentation remains possible, and within it new languages emerge.
Wana Udobang said something early in our conversation that struck a chord: Art belongs to all of us. Not collectors or galleries alone, not to the international markets, but to everyone who participates in its life. If that is true, then the responsibility for keeping the space open rests with all: artists, the curators shaping context, the institutions deciding what gets shown, and the audiences willing to encounter it on their own terms. Mr Danfo, like the Lijadu sisters, Zaria Art Society and many other artists have shown that works challenging expectations will always exist. The question is whether the institutions and audience will be ready when it arrives.
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