From June to November 2025, The Short Century Intensive jointly presented by Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) brought together U.S. fellows Pujan Karambeigi, Miatta Kawinzi, sadé powell, Cosmo Whyte, and Najha Zigbi-Johnson to explore the compressed 20th century as a formative, in-between space. Across artistic registers, they engaged with archives, excavated overlooked genealogies, and rehearsed speculative modes of citation and annotation, tracing new networks, collaborations, and Afro-diasporic relations. The intensive reimagined and activated Okwui Enwezor’s 2001–2002 exhibition The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, raising key questions: What becomes possible when African political and aesthetic thought is taken on its own terms—not as an extension, supplement, or proxy? And how might new forms of relation across geographies arise from a shared commitment to difference, rather than a desire to collapse it?

Last week, we welcomed Jonathan Chambalin, a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, and researcher, to G.A.S. Lagos as a recipient of the G.A.S. Fellowship Award 2026. Based in Lagos, Jonathan works across installation, cinemagraphs, sound art, painting, photography, and kinetic sculpture. His practice explores how everyday Nigerian materials and craft processes can be transformed into works that examine social, cultural, and environmental relationships, with a focus on labour and sustainability.

Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of welcoming British-Nigerian artist Ranti Bam for a week-long residency at G.A.S. Foundation. Based in France, her work spans sculpture, installation, and performance. In her practice she works primarily with clay to explore holding, presence, and becoming through hand-built forms that carry both strength and vulnerability. Working with red and black clays, materials closely aligned with her African identity, she creates sculptural works that move between the figurative and the abstract. She was recently invited to the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by the late Koyo Kouoh.

In December 2025, G.A.S. Foundation, in partnership with Yinka Shonibare Foundation, launched the fourth edition of the G.A.S. Fellowship Award. This year’s call, the largest to date, included multiple categories for fully funded residencies at G.A.S. Lagos. Residency A was initially designed to support two emerging Nigerian artists, while Residency B was dedicated to one art writer based in Nigeria or the diaspora.