By Henry Akubuiro
For two talented Nigerian artists, Dafe Oboro and Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski, Christmas came earlier than expected. Their joy knew no bounds as they were announced winners of the 7th edition of the Access Art X award for Nigeria and diaspora artists, respectively.
At the award announcement recently held at Access Tower headquarters of Access Bank, Oboro, a male, was declared winner of the Nigerian prize, while a female, Kazeem-Kaminski, won the African/Diaspora category.
The $10,000 prize money will be used as a grant for the Nigerian winner to organise an exhibition at the 2023 edition of ART X Lagos, plus a three-month residency at Gasworks, London.
Kazeem-Kaminski, who won the diaspora prize, will use her grant for a three-month residency at the new Yinka Shonibare’s GAS Foundation, which will also involve mentoring, support and cultural exchange opportunities.
Ms. Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, the Founder and CEO of ART X, described two award winners as “ two exceptional artists who are unique in their perspectives but are united in their ambition to shift narratives about Africa and its global diaspora.”
Her collaboration with Access Corporation for the prize, she said, was to encourage emerging artists to soar to greater heights by means of incentives and a conducive environment to excel.
She noted: We aspire, over time, to build a core group of artists for Nigeria, Africa and the Diaspora, with the potential to become truly transformational, not just within the arts ecosystem, but within our broader communities at a social, national, continental and global level.
She looked forward to working closely with these artists on their development in the coming months, even as she anticipated “that they will make the most of this opportunity, which culminates in their exhibitions at ART X Lagos 2023.”
The Access Art X Prize is yearly award for emerging artists in Nigeria, Africa and the Diaspora, created by ART X, the organisers of the ART X Lagos Art Fair, and funded by Access Corporation, the parent company of Access Bank.
Oboro, who was the 2020 recipient of the Film Prize at The Future Awards Africa and a 2020 nominee for Dazed Magazine’s Dazed100 List of people shaping youth culture, works in photography and film, drawing motifs from fashion and popular culture.
Besides, he deploys evocative sound and imagery to interrogate questions of masculinity, movement across time and space, and the socio-political state of contemporary Nigeria and greater Africa.
On the other hand, the works of Kazeem-Kamiński, a Nigerian writer, artist and researcher based in Vienna, Austria, are built around Black feminist theory and have developed a research-based and process-oriented investigative practice dealing with the condition of Black life in the African diaspora.
The two artists distinguished themselves from over thousands of entries from early-career artists in Nigeria and more than fifty countries worldwide.