Anatsui’s Awards for LIMCAF winners increase to six artists

After sponsoring four winners of Life In My City Art Festival (LIMCAF), last year, Prof El Anatsui has increased beneficiary artists to six for the 2018 edition.Winners of the Anatsui awards for LIMCAF 2018 Grand Finale Exhibition will be sponsored to the Dak’Art Biennale, Senegal next year. The top four winners last year enjoyed the sponsorship, spending two weeks, all expenses paid at the Dakar Senegal event.

Meanwhile, the organising committee of the festival has announced that the zone exhibitions have begun in the various city-zones.According to a statement by the Art Director of the Festival, Dr Ayo Adewunmi, there were altogether just under 400 entries from around the country. He said both the board, organising committee and the many VIPs who attended the Enugu event were greatly excited by the remarkable increase in the quality of entries, which continued to be evident year on year.

Few weeks ago, a jury chaired by Prof Frank Ugiomoh was announced. Held yearly, the current edition of LIMCAF, which has Twilight as its theme, traditionally, include zonal selections from across Nigeria.With Chike Obeagu as the curator for 2018 edition, other members of the jury, according to a statement by the organising committee, include Ayo Aina, Blaide Gundu Gbaden, Ngozi Omeje-Ezema, Odun Orimolade, Fide Udenta and Nicolas Michelland.

Adewunmi, Art Director at LIMCAF, explained that “in view of the growing profile of the Festival and the continued impressive interest by young artists from all over Nigeria, the Committee has gone to great lengths, as always, to appoint a jury made up of highly respected academics and reputable studio practitioners”.

Ugiomoh is Professor of Art History and Theory at the Department of Fine Art and Design, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His research and publications focus on historiography and methods in African art history as well as on criticism of modern Nigerian art. He is widely published in Nigeria and abroad. In 2010 he was curator of ‘Niger Delta Phototales’ in Port Harcourt Nigeria. He was a research scholar at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, SA in 2006. He is the editor of TOJA: Journal of African art and Managing Editor, ASUU Journal of Humanities. He is on the consulting board of Critical Interventions: Journal of Contemporary African Art and Visual Culture and NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art.

Currently he is engaged in a collaborative research on Fashion and Styles in African Cities with the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany.Aina is an acclaimed Nigerian painter, muralist and multimedia artist. He studied painting at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, graduating as the best student and winning the Nigerian Art Council Award in 1990, and MFA in 1996. For close to three decades, he has practised full-time, and participated in several exhibitions in Nigeria, UK, Italy and Dubai, as well as at the Dak’art Biennale.

Gbaden received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (1993); Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (1999); and a PhD degree in Painting, as one of the pioneer set of students, from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (2014). Gbaden taught Painting and Drawing at the University of Maiduguri for over a decade before transferring his services to newly established Federal University, Lafia, where he now teaches Painting, Drawing, and Art Theory courses. He has been the substantive Head of the Department of Visual and Creative Arts since December 2016. He is the pioneer editor of Resonance Journal of Contemporary Arts Scholarship domiciled in the Department of Visual and Creative Arts, Federal University Lafia.

Currently, Omeje-Ezema is selected for the Saatchi START Art Fair 2018 and also involved in the ongoing 60th Faenza Biennale Prize in Italy, 2018. Her Ceramic installation ‘Imagine Jonah II’ was part of the First International Biennale in Central China and ‘In My Garden there are Many Colours II’ –First West African Art Fair (ART X), Lagos, 2016 respectively.

She also participated in “Le Pinceau De L’Integration” in Senegal, during the Dakar Biennale, 2016. Orimolade is a multimedia artist, academic and writer that engages her practice in a multifaceted perspective of trans-disciplinary approaches, research and collaborations. Her work spans a plethora of interests linked by space, the intangible, orientation and behavioural tendencies.

A graduate of Yaba College of Technology and the University of South Africa Pretoria, Orimolade has participated in several exhibitions locally and internationally, having been in artist residencies such as Bern Performance Art Festival, Switzerland, Live Art DK Copenhagen and Lilith Performance Studio Residency Malmo, Sweden among others.

Udenta attended IMT Enugu, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka and University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He studied Fine Art with bias in Painting and Art History. He taught at FCE Eha Amufu before joining IMT Enugu where he is currently a chief lecturer and Director of Academic Planning. Udenta is a widely travelled academic participating in several international conferences and workshops as well as exhibitions on Art and related subjects. He is a prolific painter whose works can be found in selected homes and offices within and outside Nigeria. He is member of SNA and many professional bodies.

Michelland is the current Director of Alliance Française Ibadan. The French cultural institution, which is part of an international network of 802 centres in the world, aims at promoting art and culture as well as teaching the French language to different publics and interested persons.

Obiagu (LIMCAF Curator 2018) is a multi-talented artist who finds creative expression through painting, photography, installation art, and poetry. He exhibited great interest in art during the early stages of his life, and had his first formal best student in art award while in high school.