The Guest Artist Space Foundation (G.A.S.) and Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) announced the winners of the second G.A.S. Fellowship Award. The three selected winners include Amanda Iheme, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, and Ojo Taiye.
The 2023 edition welcomed applications from emerging creative practitioners residing in the West African region across diverse disciplines. It specifically sought applications from those whose works were rooted in the realms of Materiality, Ecology, Food, Environment, and History in the present.
The judging panel also expressed admiration for the wealth of talent, quality, and diversity in the presented artistic practices, as stated in the announcement. Two of these talented individuals will be embarking on their residencies at G.A.S. Lagos, while the third will have the unique opportunity to research and create at our sister location, the G.A.S. Ecology Green Farm in Ijebu.
AMANDA IHEME
Amanda Iheme is an architecture photographer and psychotherapist living and working in Lagos, Nigeria. She studied at the University of Cape Coast for a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and received a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Swansea University. Amanda also runs her private practice called Ndidi while working as an artist.
She focuses on documenting and preserving Nigeria’s architectural heritage, celebrating design, history, and culture. Her work appeared in group exhibitions, such as SMO Contemporary’s ‘Dis Lagos Life’ (2020), ArtX Lagos’ ‘This is Lagos’ (2019), and Lagos Photo Festival’s ‘Time Has Gone’ (2018). Amanda will complete her residency at G.A.S. Lagos.
KOSISOCHUKWU NNEBE
Kosisochukwu Nnebe is a conceptual artist whose practice draws inspiration from postcolonial and Black feminist thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Sylvia Wynter. Working across installation, lens-based media and sculpture, Nnebe also engages with topics that range from the politics of Black visibility, embodiment and spatiality to the use of foodways as counter-archives of colonial histories.
At its core, Nnebe’s practice focuses on building an anti-colonial and anti-imperial world through acts of solidarity (human and otherwise). Also challenging colonial logics, and speculatively (re)imagining pasts, presents, and futures. Kosisochukwu will complete her residency at the G.A.S. Farm House.
OJO TAIYE
Ojo Taiye is a Nigerian eco-artivist, cultural worker, and writer. He uses poetry as a tool to hide his frustration with society. His practice is collaborative and often draws from personal experience or interpretation of climate change, homelessness, and migration, as well as a breadth of transversal issues ranging from racism to black identity and mental health.
His poems have also been published or are forthcoming in Evergreen Review, Mizna, Narrative Magazine, Mycelia, The Spectacle, Salamander, Consequence, Stinging Fly, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Banshee, Willow Springs, Lambda Literary, Fiddlehead, Puritan, Frontier Poetry, Notre Dame Review, or Strange Horizon. In addition, he has worked on the Future(s) 2021 with Catalyst Arts and Belfast Photo Festival; 2021 Sustrans Black History Month Art Project, 2021-22 Scene Stirling COP26 Climate Commission, switch-art project 2021/22, 2022 Green Transitions Conference, Norway; 2022 – CHCI/MELLON Global Humanities Institute, South Africa; We Hear You—A Climate Archive, 2023. His debut mixed media installation was exhibited in Linz, Austria, as part of the Ars Electronica Festival, 2023. Ojo will complete his residency at G.A.S. Lagos.
