By AFP
Nigeria’s elite sipped champagne and splashed thousands of dollars on contemporary paintings at a fair in Lagos this week, an early step into the international art world for Africa’s most populous nation.
In front of major players from cinema, fashion, and finance, about 30 art galleries from across the African continent — but also from Paris, London, and Barcelona — showed off their best pieces at the ArtX fair.
“Nigeria’s art collectors are not well known globally, and when we arrived here we didn’t realise the potential,” said Lea Perier Loko from the Paris-based gallery Septieme.
“When collectors fall for something, they don’t hesitate to spend!”
The pieces they sold first were two gigantic blue paintings by Kenyan artist Kaloki Nyamai that represent “a part of history that isn’t found in books”.
The two paintings, each measuring 2 meters square, were sold separately for 20,000 U.S. dollars.
“In Paris, it’s much more difficult to sell paintings of this size. It really shows the difference in scale with Lagos,” said Perier Loko.
Among its 210 million residents, oil-rich Nigeria has some of the world’s wealthiest people, with bankers and traders now becoming important contemporary art collectors.
For a long time, Nigeria’s art scene was known for looking inward, with its collectors buying colorful, local figurative art.
“Things have changed a lot,” said Delphine Lopez from one of the continent’s best-known galleries, Cecile Fakhoury.
Her gallery has decided to bet on three Cote d’Ivoire artists and two others from Benin at its stand.
Visitors stop, intrigued by a tapestry made from raffia sprinkled with seashells and pieces of string, created by Franco-Ivorian Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien.
