Notably, the renowned British artist Yinka Shonibare CBE opened Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation in 2019, a nonprofit in Lagos offering artist residencies and public programming by and for artists in the country and across the globe. “Our focus has always been on building long-term cultural infrastructure rather than short-term visibility,” Shonibare explained, pointing out recent initiatives including the foundation’s Ìmòra Arts Intensive, which trains 10 early-career artists in the city. “What I’m seeing internationally is a genuine shift,” he added. “Nigerian art and creativity is no longer treated as a peripheral curiosity, but as a central force in global culture—and that change is driven by the strength of the institutions and networks we are building in Nigeria.”

THE Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation and the Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) convened the inaugural Re:assemblages Symposium on November 4 and 5 at the Alliance Française, Ikoyi, Lagos. The event marked the official launch of the African Arts Libraries Lab (AAL Lab), a new continental network connecting arts libraries, publishers, and cultural institutions across Lagos, Dakar, Marrakesh, and Cape Town, while engaging global institutions that hold African and Afro-diasporic collections.

Over 50 leading artists, archivists, researchers, and cultural practitioners examined how archives shape contemporary cultural memory and artistic production during the programme.

African and Afro-diasporic archives will be celebrated and reinterpreted as part of a major project launching later this year in Lagos, driven by the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare. The Re:assemblages symposium (4-5 November), taking place at Alliance Française de Lagos, will bring together artists, scholars and publishers “to collectively rethink African and Afro-diasporic archives as living, contested and future-shaping spaces,” says a statement.

The symposium is organised by the non-profit Guest Artists Space Foundation (G.A.S.) and Yinka Shonibare Foundation, which were both founded by Shonibare in 2019. The Lagos event is the second edition of Re: assemblages (2025-26), a two-year programme which “reimagines the role of archives in shaping African and global art histories”, the organisers add.

Join us at G.A.S. Lagos on December 9th, 2025, for Art CRIT, an informal critique session facilitated by current resident Sola Olulode. Designed for artists working across various mediums who have felt underserved by traditional critique spaces, the session offers a supportive environment to share practice, exchange ideas, and receive constructive feedback. Sola recognises that many artists may have had limited opportunities for meaningful critique or may have experienced spaces where feedback feels rigid or discouraging. Art Crit at G.A.S. reframes this experience, centring openness, dialogue, and mutual respect.

This December, we are thrilled to host our final resident of the year, Swiss-Haitian multidisciplinary artist Sasha Huber, as she undertakes a four-week residency at G.A.S. Lagos.  Based in Helsinki and internationally recognised for her research-driven practice, Huber works across performance, video, photography, and collaborative intervention to explore the politics of memory, care, and belonging in relation to colonial histories. Central to her practice is the staple gun—a tool she reclaims from its violent associations to propose possibilities for repair, symbolically stitching together wounds and challenging contested narratives. Working with archival materials and layered processes, she creates reparative gestures that connect past and present. Huber is also widely known for her contribution to the Demounting Louis Agassiz campaign, which seeks to critically reassess the glaciologist’s racist legacy.