ACETNEWS
The Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art (YSMA), Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos and SMO Contemporary Art will present Chika Okeke-Agulu: Freedom Bird, a major survey of the Nigerian artist and scholar’s practice spanning more than three decades, from November 1, to January 31, 2027. Curated by Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, with Sandra Mbanefo-Obiago as Associate Curator, the retrospective solo exhibition will bring together paintings, drawings and sculptures alongside selected poems, diary entries, photographs and archival materials that illuminate the intellectual, political and personal contexts behind the artist’s work.
The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter Chika Okeke-Agulu first and foremost as an artist, whose more than three decades of studio practice have evolved alongside his influential work as a scholar, critic and curator of African art. His artistic practice emerged during the turbulence of military rule in the 1980s and 1990s, engaging questions of repression, civic life, democratic struggle and the position of artists and intellectuals in a changing Nigeria. His subsequent migration to the United States introduced further questions of exile, memory, displacement and belonging into his artistic vocabulary.
Since the early 1990s, Okeke-Agulu’s artistic practice has been presented in solo, collaborative and group exhibitions across Nigeria, the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia, including exhibitions at the National Museum in Lagos, Goethe-Institut Lagos, Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, the first Johannesburg Biennale and the Newark Museum, among others.
The title, Freedom Bird, is drawn from a recurring motif in Okeke-Agulu’s visual and poetic vocabulary and speaks to freedom as an aspiration continually negotiated through political struggle, personal memory and artistic expression. Across works produced from the late 1980s to the present, the exhibition traces an evolving artistic language through which the artist reflects on Nigeria’s postcolonial experience, from military dictatorship and democratic aspiration to civic fracture, migration and the continuing movement of Nigerians in search of new futures.
For YSMA, the decision to host Freedom Bird is deeply connected to the museum’s identity as an educational museum – an institution committed not merely to displaying artworks, but to creating opportunities for audiences to encounter art through research, context, critical inquiry and dialogue. The exhibition brings together artistic practice and scholarship in an especially powerful way: Okeke-Agulu has spent decades simultaneously making art and producing some of the most influential scholarship on Nigerian and African modern and contemporary art.
An artist, art historian, critic, curator, published poet and educator, Okeke-Agulu is currently the Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies at Princeton University and Director of its Africa World Initiative. He has taught extensively on modern and contemporary African art and historiography, curated major exhibitions internationally, and authored or co-authored influential studies of artists including El Anatsui, Yusuf Grillo and Obiora Udechukwu. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022 and served as Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford in 2023.
It is this intersection of studio practice and scholarship that makes the exhibition particularly significant. Freedom Bird provides an opportunity for students, researchers, artists, educators and the wider public to engage with the work of a major Nigerian artist while also exploring the ideas, histories and intellectual questions that have shaped his practice within a museum setting.
Dr. Jess Castellote, Director Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, described the exhibition as a natural extension of the museum’s educational mission in his words:
“YSMA was conceived as a museum where art is not simply seen, but studied, questioned and understood. Freedom Bird embodies that philosophy in an exceptional way because Chika Okeke-Agulu’s artistic practice and intellectual work are inseparable from some of the most important conversations about Nigerian and African art today. Bringing this exhibition to YSMA gives us the opportunity to place the artist, his work and the historical questions that shaped them in conversation with our students, researchers and the wider public. It is precisely the kind of exhibition that demonstrates what an educational museum can contribute to the cultural life of Nigeria,” Castellote said.
The exhibition also represents a meaningful reunion of curator and institution. Dr. Onwuegbucha, who is currently Assistant Professor of African and Caribbean Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Cambridge, was previously guest curator of YSMA’s inaugural exhibitions in 2019. His academic and curatorial practice has focused extensively on African modern and contemporary art, including the Nsukka School – the subject of his doctoral research at Princeton University. He has also curated and co-curated exhibitions in Nigeria, Europe and the United States, including Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts at the Princeton University Art Museum.
